Why Your Brain Isn't A Computer - Forbes

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Alex Knapp, Forbes Staff

I write about the future of science, technology, and culture.

TEC H | 5/04/2012 @ 3:50PM | 14,021 views

Why Your Brain Isn't A

Computer
If the human brain were so simple that
we could understand it, we would be so
simple that we couldnt.
- Emerson M. Pugh
Earlier this week, i09 featured a primer, of
sorts, by George Dvorsky regarding how
an artificial human brain could be built.
Its worth reading, because it provides a
nice overview of the philosophy that
underlies some artificial intelligence
research, while simultaneously albeit
unwittingly demonstrating the some of
the fundamental flaws underlying artificial
intelligence research based on the
computational theory of mind.

Phrenology diagram. From People's

Cyclopedia of Universal Knowledge
(1883). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The computational theory of mind, in

essence, says that your brain works like a computer. That is, it takes input
from the outside world, then performs algorithms to produce output in the
form of mental state or action. In other words, it claims that the brain is an
information processor where your mind is software that runs on the
hardware of the brain.
Dvorsky explicitly invokes the computational theory of mind by stating if
brain activity is regarded as a function that is physically computed by brains,
then it should be possible to compute it on a Turing machine, namely a
computer. He then sets up a false dichotomy by stating that if you believe
that theres something mystical or vital about human cognition youre
probably not going to put too much credence into the methods of
developing artificial brains that he describes.
This is a game that a lot of adherents of the computational theory of mind
like to play often, I think, without realize that theyre doing it. Adherents of
the computational theory of mind often claim that the only alternative
theories of mind would necessarily involve a supernatural or dualistic
component. This is ironic, because fundamentally, this theory is dualistic. It
implies that your mind is something fundamentally different from your brain
its just software that can, in theory, run on any substrate.
By contrast, a truly non-dualistic theory of mind has to state what is clearly
obvious: your mind and your brain are identical. Now, this doesnt
necessarily mean that an artificial human brain is impossible its just that
programming such a thing would be much more akin to embedded systems
programming rather than computer programming. Moreover, it means that

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the hardware matters a lot because the hardware would have to essentially
mirror the hardware of the brain. This enormously complicates the task of
trying to build an artificial brain, given that we dont even know how the 300
neuron roundworm brain works, much less the 300 billion neuron human
brain.
But looking at the workings of the brain in more detail reveal some more
fundamental flaws with computational theory. For one thing, the brain itself
isnt structured like a Turing machine. Its a parallel processing network of
neural nodes but not just any network. Its a plastic neural network that
can in some ways be actively changed through influences by will or
environment. For example, so long as some crucial portions of the brain
arent injured, its possible for the brain to compensate for injury by actively
rewriting its own network. Or, as you might notice in your own life, its
possible to improve your own cognition just by getting enough sleep and
exercise.
You dont have to delve into the technical details too much to see this in your
life. Just consider the prevalence of cognitive dissonance and confirmation
bias. Cognitive dissonance is the ability of the mind to believe what it wants
even in the face of opposing evidence. Confirmation bias is the ability of the
mind to seek out evidence that conforms to its own theories and simply gloss
over or completely ignore contradictory evidence. Neither of these aspects of
the brain are easily explained through computation it might not even be
possible to express these states mathematically.
Whats more, the brain simply cant be divided into functional pieces.
Neuronal circuitry is fuzzy and from a hardware perspective, its leaky.
Unlike the logic gates of a computer, the different working parts of the brain
impact each other in ways that were only just beginning to understand. And
those circuits can also be adapted to new needs. As Mark Changizi points out
in his excellent book Harnessed, humans dont have a portions of the brain
devoted to speech, writing, or music. Rather, theyre emergent theyre
formed from parts of the brain that were adapted to simpler visual and
hearing tasks.
If the parts of the brain we think of as being fundamentally human not just
intelligence, but self-awareness are emergent properties of the brain, rather
than functional ones, as seems likely, the computational theory of mind gets
even weaker. Think of consciousness and will as something that emerges
from the activity of billions of neural connections, similar to how a national
economy emerges from billions of different business transactions. Its not a
perfect analogy, but that should give you an idea of the complexity. In many
ways, the structure of a national economy is much simpler than that of the
brain, and despite that fact that its a much more strictly mathematical
proposition, its incredibly difficult to model with any kind of precision.
The mind is best understood, not as software, but rather as an emergent
property of the physical brain. So building an artificial intelligence with the
same level of complexity as that of a human intelligence isnt a matter of just
finding the right algorithms and putting it together. The brain is much more
complicated than that, and is very likely simply not amenable to that kind of
mathematical reductionism, any more than economic systems are.
Getting back to the question of artificial intelligence, then, you can see why it
becomes a much taller order to produce a human-level intelligence. Its
possible to build computers that can learn and solve complex problems. But
its much less clear that theres an easy road to a computer thats geared
towards the type of emergent properties that distinguish the human brain.
Even if such properties did emerge, Im willing to bet that the end result of a
non-human, sapient intelligence would be very alien to our understanding,
possibly to the point of non-comprehension. Electric circuits simply function

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differently then electrochemical ones, and so its likely that any sapient
properties would emerge quite differently.
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http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexknapp/2012/05/04/why-your-brain-isnt-a-computer/

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