Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009)

Re:Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009) by andyjohnson0 on Thursday March 27, 2014 @08:12AM (#7479834)

Interesting argument. Is it fair to summarise it as: (a) Mathematics models the deterministic and random aspects of reality; (b) Mathematics reduces to computation; (c) Church-Turing says that all computation is equivalent; (d) Therefore a Turing machine[2] can fully model reality.

"When you get deep enough, mathematics is in fact reducible to computation (paging Robert Harper)."

Could you elaborate on that, as it seems to be a big jump? I'm not familiar with Harper's work (I'm assuming you mean this [1] Robert Harper). I'm also not a mathematician...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Harper_(computer_scienti...

[2] Or, presumably, Lambda calculus or Godelian recursion.

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Re:Why Minds Are Not Like Computers (2009) by eli_gottlieb on Thursday March 27, 2014 @08:54AM (#7480009)

This Robert Harper, indeed:

http://existentialtype.wordpress.com/2011/03/27/the-holy-tri...

http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~gds/PLMW/harper-plmw13-talk.pdf

Types are propositions! Programs are mappings! Computation is proof!

These are the truths of this world! Submit to those truths, you webdevs in human clothing ;-)!

(I'm always hoping someone will catch the obscure references I throw into my comments, but alas.)

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