Brain/Mind — Hardware/Software Analogy
The brain/mind is the most significant intellectual quest of all time.
The best way to understand something is to find a good analogy. Humankind tries to explain the brain over thousands of years and formed six different metaphors over 2000 years. According to holy books, the first one was that humans were formed by clay and dirt and infused spirit by god. In the 3rd century, hydraulic engineering is the most intricate invention by humankind, and the brain was tried to be explained by hydraulic flows. Later, in the 1600s, “thinking” is the result of the mechanical motions of the brain. In the 1700s the brain was tried to be explained by electricity and chemistry. In the mid-1800, after inventions for communication such as the telegraph, German physicist Hermann von Helmholtz compared the human brain to the telegraph machine. And lastly, John von Neumann stated that the human brain is “prima facie digital”. Even cartoons for kids are still using these analogies.
Some researchers argue that the brain is a computer, not specifically a Von Neumann architecture programmable machine but a Turing Machine because they can do computations and run algorithms. Eventually, they think that the brain is Turing complete. On the other hand, researchers like Robert Epstein don’t believe that the brain is a computer because computers operate on symbolic representations of the world. Computers have information, data, rules, software, lexicons, representations, algorithms, memories, models, programs. Brains do not have.
We can simply summarise the braid/mind and software/hardware properties such as ;
Brain/Mind
- The brain is not digital.
- It is a living organism.
- It has low energy consumption.
- It can form new connections.
- It uses electro-chemical transmission.
- It is always on-state.
- It is efficient in the interpretation of environment.
- Brain/Mind are entangled.
Hardware/Software
- The hardware/software is digital.
- It is concrete.
- The software can be ported from one computer to another
- It is efficient in computation
- It uses electrical Transmission
- It is binary as of now
- It is efficient in computation
- Software and Hardware are separable
As a result, I don’t think the brain vs. computers or mind vs. software is a correct analogy. They share some common attributes, but, by nature, they are quite different. Like cars and planes are both for transportation, carry people, luggage, but they operate quite differently. I think the brain-computer analogy will change in the future after new inventions. Humankind will form new analogies to understand the brain.
References
- Epstein, R., 2016. The Empty Brain.
- Kanwisher, N., 2018. How Can We Study the Human Mind and Brain? Marr’s Level’s of Analysis.
- Minsky, M., 1986. Society of Mind, New York
- Zarkadakis, G., 2015. In Our Own Image
