From: Phillip Huggan (cdnprodigy@yahoo.com)
Date: Tue May 16 2006 - 14:47:22 MDT
But to me, the firing of a synapse does not look like signal processing. If I had to call it any one term I would choose chemistry. It isn't the release of the neurotransmitters that is important, it is the receptor surfaces and underlying structure activities that give rise to qualia. A silicon mind would (because the chemistry of silicon is far different from carbon) have different receptor surface topologies and different functional underlying structural stuff. And that is assuming an analogous configuration for carbon-based brain geometries can be found (silicon is much less versatile than is carbon).
With computer signal processing, the analogy to a neurotransmitter is a packet of data. But that data is the substance of the system. For humans, neurotransmitters are only important because they modify receptor structures and connected superstructures. In humans it isn't the neurotransmitters that are the substance of the system.
Martin Striz <mstriz@gmail.com> wrote:
The parts that constitute computation are the firing patterns.
Can't signal processing be performed on any substrate?
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