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Are minds are not like computers because we humans have 'emotions.' Emotions affects the mind's performance and what memories are activated.
Mind is not a computer. It's actually two computers, maybe three. They co-evolved, each with different goals, and they work together as a team, with all the competition and cooperation that it entails.
It feels like this article sets up something of a straw man. The analogy that a mind is like a computer is just that, an analogy . It's used to present the high-level structure of the brain in a accessible, understandable way, not as a logical argument. This analogy is not the justification for why people believe that "the mind can be replicated on a computer". And yet the article tries to disprove the latter, deep a…
"human minds exist"
Therefore, whatever it is that minds do is possible.
As I mentioned another half (theory first, then experimental validation) of this approach is another Einstein came along and made amazing thoeries once and for all. Then the expriments proves it is true to our best knowledge up to date. The the loop starts again.
I think the first cases may be the most prevalent because insights are not very easy to come by without seeing experimental result first. If we can make a organized way to keep working on the first half, the second half might come by some time. Just some random thoughts, primarily made to inspire some followup conversations amongst us.
Are minds are not like computers because we humans have 'emotions.' Emotions affects the mind's performance and what memories are activated.
You're assuming emotions are some kind of magic that happens outside of your neurons and synapses. They don't. Provided we can accurately simulate neurons, synapses and how they interact in an accurate enough way such machines could have emotions. The challenge is obviously in achieving the above.
"For decades, most people thought of the brain and its extension the central nervous system as an electrical communication system . . . resembling a telephone system with trillions of miles of intricately crisscrossing wires." But new research techniques for studying peptides and receptors show that only 2 percent of neuronal communications are electrical, across a synapse. In fact, she writes, "the brain is a bag of hormones." And those hormones affect not only the brain, but every aspect of body and mind; many memories are stored throughout the body, as changes in the structure of receptors at the cellular level. "The body," Pert concludes, "is the unconscious mind!"
From: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/review-of-molecules-of...
Emotions seem to occur outside the brain.
Can you replicate the way brain works in another machine? If it is a machine than most probably yes.
Can you replicate the way brain works in a digital computer? It is possible that there are physical processes going on in the brain that cannot be feasibly approximated by digital algorithms (i.e. it is possible that there are analog machines that are for some problems faster than any digital computer can be). There used to be analogue computers and it is entirely possible that some day they again will be useful.
Can you build a brain without knowing how it works? Well we know how to build a brain without knowing how it works - you need a woman and a man and ...
What is the definition of artificial then?
Can you control AI if you don't know how exactly it works? Probably not - just like we cannot really control humans, but we have pretty good ways of influencing them.
We have gone leaps and bounds since we started building an "artificial brain". Look at where deep learning is leading to. Ofcourse, we can't mimic the brain in all its majesty anytime soon but short of that, there's so much we can achieve.
For me a good way of thinking about this is the discovery of genetic heredity. Heredity was known for a long time before DNA was known. Eventually evolution became understood too. But, before DNA was discovered we didn't know what a trait "looked like" in much the same way as we don't know what a thought or memory "looks like."
Without that knowledge it's hard to know if a computer is mimicking a mind or being a mind.