That’s not at all what I’m getting at. I have no doubt that computers can now or will some day be able to emulate many if not all of the functions of the brain. Probably outperform the brain at it in many regards.
What I’m getting at is that they have different “works.” By ascribing to a brain all of the capabilities, quirks, and paradigms of a computer, you begin to draw a quite inaccurate conception of how the BRAIN works and what the BRAIN can do. Brain memory does not behave like computer memory. Brain learning does not behave like computer learning.
Perhaps, some day, if computers have advanced to a level that they can emulate everything the brain does, in the way the brain does it, THEN we can use computers in order to serve as an accurate metaphor for the brain.
But there are a lot of things a computer CAN do that a brain CANNOT. A brain cannot respond identically to repeated input. A brain cannot act as if some piece of input never came into its purvey. A brain isn’t neatly separated into a CPU and separate areas that are specifically engineered for singular purposes. A brain cannot smell a dead rat without triggering memories of the first dead rat it ever smelled.
Many of the things that are fundamental about how a brain works, learns, and so on, are optional for a computer. You could have it learn or not. Self modify or not. Make connections between movement and sensation or not. But for a brain, these are just “how it works”, and it’s a brain because it does these things.
Thus, there are many computerlike things about brains, and many brainlike things about computers. But the analogy is flawed, and understanding that the analogy is flawed allows for a more nuanced discussion about the nature of the brain.
