NEUROSCIENCE, BRAINS, AND COMPUTERS

This paper addresses the role of the neurosciences in establishing what the brain is and how states of the brain relate to states of the mind. The brain is viewed as a computational device performing operations on symbols. However, the brain is a special purpose computational device designed by evolution and development for survival and reproduction, in close interaction with the environment. The hardware of the brain (its structure) is very different from that of man-made computers. The computational style of the brain is also very different from traditional computers: the computational algorithms, instead of being sets of external instructions, are embedded in brain structure. Concerning the relationships between brain and mind a number of questions lie ahead. One of them is why and how, only the human brain grasped the notion of God, probably only at the evolutionary stage attained by Homo sapiens.