Who Owns Ideas?

[axel77]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

All I can say is this: If you're so sure the brain is just a "meat calculator," don't you think scientists would've figured out how it works a long time ago?

Yes I think that. I mean how old is modern science today? And still we have no real good way to observe the brain without destryoing it, yes there are new pciture giving technologies available, which are yet just a few years old. And its been a sensation to be able to look into a human without cutting him open. But all they do is to give some crude area activity, not even close to a precise way to be able to observe whats going on.

They're figured out more complex organs and processes than that, throughout the body. Why not the brain?

I dont see how any other human organ is "more complex" than the human brain, or any other process in the human body is "more complex".

There were just some organs and processes that were simpler, more feasible to be able to understand. Thats why scientists went for that first.

Or do you really believe humans are just biochemical toasters?

Humans are actually a kind of "combustion engines"

[acidzebra]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

All I can say is this: If you're so sure the brain is just a "meat calculator," don't you think scientists would've figured out how it works a long time ago? They're figured out more complex organs and processes than that, throughout the body. Why not the brain?

Or do you really believe humans are just biochemical toasters?

Why haven't we figured out cancer? Why haven't we figured out why an otherwise healthy heart can go into irregular patterns and bug out? Where do you get that the human brain is not so complex, and which organs are there of greater complexity? There's so much we haven't figured out in nature, but none of it necessary implies there must be something more behind it than "it is complex and we don't have the tools/knowledge to fully unravel it... yet". Neuroscience is just getting started. How long have non-invasive non-destructive brain scanning tools been around, and how good are they right now?

Yes, we are meat machines. I don't agree with the "just" in "just a meat calculator" - nothing wrong with meat machines. We are glorious and fantastic meat machines, evolved from countless generations of earlier meat machines in a great big orgy of natural selection and changing environments. Just because I know a sunset is nothing but light scattering due to atmospheric conditions does not reduce my enjoyment of it. Just because my enjoyment is an electrochemical response to external stimuli and perhaps partly conditioned does not make it less valid or enjoyable.

[axel77]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

And yes, I disagree with the "data in" part of your equation. The brain can make its own data, independent from input. It is not limited to direct input for data to process.

But where should this "own data" come from? If not some "magic"?

So why did no stone age men come up with the theory of relativity?

Other than that, I think your problem is just, that you have a very specific understanding what may be called a "machine", which seems to be a bit broader for others.