4 ms·

People have already pointed out why. In addition, let me point out why it is also no more powerful than a Turing machine. If you accept physicalism, then thoug

People have already pointed out why. In addition, let me point out why it is also no more powerful than a Turing machine. If you accept physicalism, then thoughts arise as the result of electrical, mechanical, and chemical processes. As far as we know, those processes are governed by laws of physics which are all computable to arbitrary precision. Assuming that our thought processes are not infinitely sensitive to random perturbations, then the human brain can be simulated by a Turing machine. Thus, everything we know about nature indicates that the human brain is no more powerful than a Turing machine.

TheLoneWolfling 12y ago
> As far as we know, those processes are governed by laws of physics which are all computable to arbitrary precision. Look at, for example, electron shot noise for a counterexample. Given the state of a low-output lamp and a detector, one cannot compute the state of the detector after a period of time to arbitrary precision. We can say that the detector will have x% chance of triggering within the time period - but that is all. We cannot say definitely "the detector will trigger" or "the detector will not trigger", no matter how exactly we know the initial state of the system. And we already know that the human brain can be affected by similar processes (If nothing else, our eyes start registering at full night vision when <10 photons hit within 100ms, which is within the realm of shot noise.)