zlacker

>>mdszy+(OP)
Why is there never any fundamental research whether human intelligence is even computable? All these huge, expensive projects based on an untested premise.

>>yters+GI
Why wouldn't it be? It seems to me that at worst we would have to wait for computers to become as powerful and complex as a human brain, and then simulating human intelligence would be a matter of accurately modelling the connections.

Is there doubt as to whether a neuron can be represented computationally?

>>radekl+SJ
The mind may be nonphysical.

>>yters+fT
That's one position, but there are three problems with it:

1. You have to solve the interaction problem (how does the mind interact with the physical world?)

2. You need to explain why the world is not physically closed without blatantly violating physical theory / natural laws.

3. From the fact that the mind is nonphysical, it does not follow that computationalism is false. On the contrary, I'd say that computationalism is still the best explanation of how human thinking works even for a dualist. (All the alternatives are quite mystical, except maybe for hypercomputationalism.)

>>13415+LW
1. No I don't. I don't have to explain how gravity works to know that it does and make scientific claims about its operation. Likewise, I can scientifically demonstrate the mind is non physical and interacts with our physical world without explaining how.

2. If the world is not physically closed then physical theory and natural laws are not violated, since they would not apply to anything beyond the physical world.

3. True, but if the mind can be shown to perform physically uncomputable tasks, then we can infer the mind is not physical. In which case we can also apply Occam's razor and infer the mind is doing something uncomputable as opposed to having access to vast immaterial computational resources.

Finally, calling a position names, such as 'mystical', does nothing to determine the veracity of the position. At best it is counter productive by distracting from the logic of the argument.

>>yters+U41
Explaining how gravity works doesn't tell you whether gravity itself is a real thing, whether it is metaphysical, whether it's an epiphenomena of something else. People talk about it being curvature in spacetime vs. a force, but we're just reifying the math, right?

And I don't think we have a completely firm grasp on what is possible computationally with a given amount of physical resources, given the development of quantum computing.