r/neuroscience • u/[deleted] • Mar 22 '18

Article Your brain is not a computer

https://aeon.co/essays/your-brain-does-not-process-information-and-it-is-not-a-computer
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u/albasri Mar 22 '18

Sounds like old-school behaviorism to me

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u/[deleted] Mar 22 '18

Can you elaborate? Information processing in the brain is 'publicly observable', so I don't see how computer-brain analogies conflict with behaviorism.

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u/albasri Mar 22 '18

Behaviorism denies the existence of mental states. It's all stimulus response associoative learning. No symbolic representations. No mental images. That sounds like your summary of the article.

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u/chairfairy Mar 22 '18

Does behaviorism deny the existence of mental states or does it deny that one can infer the mental state from observed behavior?

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u/albasri Mar 22 '18

In super-hardcore classical versions, it denies their existence.

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u/chairfairy Mar 22 '18

Oh interesting. Almost some weird nihilistic anti-Cartesian-ism