🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <37mgkc$454@mp.cs.niu.edu>, rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
|> In <Cxo7oo.I8w@murdoch.acc.Virginia.EDU> smb3u@delton.psyc.virginia.edu (Steven M. Boker) writes:
|> >In <37kln5$nh3@portal.gmu.edu> herwin@vanish (Harry Erwin) writes:
|> >In article <37l2d0$hpr@mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
|> >>Personally, I tend to doubt any argument which tries to make anything
|> >>important out of a difference between digital and analog.
|> 
|> >Whether or not there is a difference between analog and digital
|> >representation of information in the brain has nothing to with the
|> >phenomena of flicker fusion and apparent motion, two highly
|> >interesting cognitive probes in their own right.
|> 
|> I probably wrote my comment carelessly, and your interpretation is
|> not what I intended.  There is a question of fact, as to whether the
|> brain actually uses analog methods.  I would not be at all surprised
|> if the answer is yes.  I was discussing the different question, which
|> is a matter of principle.  Some people are arguing that, in
|> principle, cognition must be analog, and cannot be digital.  It is
|> this "in principle" argument which I suggested was bogus.

I view the question as an emperical question.

Can we produce a digital device about the size of the human brain which will
have behaviors consistent with human cognition?

I suspect that if the answer is yes we will accept that the device has 
cognitive capabilities.

At increaing levels of percision the digital device may be harder to identify,
but judicious may continue to identify the digital device that models above
the level of thermal noise (maybe not, that's the question.)

Can a digital device model an analog device to the level of thermal noise
in no more space than the analog device?

-- 
--gary forbis@u.washington.edu