“One can imagine a computer simulation of the action of peptides in the hypothalamus that is accurate down to the last synapse. But equally one can imagine a computer simulation of the oxidation of hydrocarbons in a car engine or the action of digestive processes in a stomach when it is digesting pizza. And the simulation is no more the real thing in the case of the brain than it is in the case of the car or the stomach. Barring miracles, you could not run your car by doing a computer simulation of the oxidation of gasoline, and you could not digest pizza by running the program that simulates such digestion. It seems obvious that a simulation of cognition will similarly not produce the effects of the neurobiology of cognition.”

"Is the Brain’s Mind a Computer Program?", Scientific American (January 1990).

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "One can imagine a computer simulation of the action of peptides in the hypothalamus that is accurate down to the last s…" by John Rogers Searle?
John Rogers Searle photo
John Rogers Searle 37
American philosopher 1932

Related quotes

Robert J. Marks II photo

“Simulated evolution on a computer works but is no where near the gradual incremental process that is associated with Darwinian evolution. It's closer to dog breeding in terms of its computational complexity.”

Robert J. Marks II (1950) American electrical engineering researcher and intelligent design advocate

In the universe, [besides] space, matter and energy, there is information. [Information hasn't yet] been [well] defined nor studied.
Many times proponents of evolutionary computing … refuse to recognize the contribution of [the programmer's infusion of information] into the process.
Association with ID (intelligent design) in any way is detrimental to one's career. Everybody who works in ID should first have tenure before they come out of the closet.
My comments are as an expert in computational intelligence. I'm not a biologist. For me to talk about the details of biology is as stupid as a British biologist claiming expertise in religion. (A reference to Richard Dawkins.)
Engineers actually design things. This is why [many] engineers are interested in the area of intelligent design
"Well-Informed: Dr. Robert Marks and the Evolutionary Informatics Lab,", From an interview with Casey Luskin of the pro-intelligent design Discovery Institute, July 20, 2007, 2010-05-06 http://www.idthefuture.com/2007/07/wellinformed_dr_robert_marks_a.html,

John D. Barrow photo

“To an increasing number of practitioners, computer simulations rooted in mathematics represent a third way of doing science, alongside theory and experiment.”

Ivars Peterson (1948) Canadian mathematician

Source: The Mathematical Tourist: New and Updated Snapshots of Modern Mathematics (1998), Chapter 1, “Explorations” (p. 10)

“We must not forget, in all the enthusiasm for computer simulations, occasionally we must look at Nature as She is.”

Richard Hamming (1915–1998) American mathematician and information theorist

The Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn (1991)

John Allen Paulos photo

“Humor, since it depends on so many emotional, social, and intellectual facets of human beings, is particularly immune to computer simulation.”

John Allen Paulos (1945) American mathematician

Source: Mathematics and Humor: A Study of the Logic of Humor (1980), Chapter 3, “Self-Reference and Paradox” (p. 51)

John McCarthy photo
Charles Stross photo
Jean Baudrillard photo

“For it is with the same imperialism that present-day simulators try to make the real, all the real, coincide with their simulation models.”

Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French sociologist and philosopher

1980s, Simulacra and Simulation (1981)

“An analysis of the concept of mind is an important philosophical issue, but the analysis cannot be reduced to programming of physiological terms… [It remarks the importance of the question] the way people think and the way computers can simulate thinking.”

John F. Sowa (1940) artificial intelligence researcher

Source: Conceptual Structures, 1984, p. 359 cited in: Rajiv Kishore, Ram Ramesh (2006) Ontologies: A Handbook of Principles, Concepts and Applications in Information Systems. p. 300

Jean Baudrillard photo

Related topics