What kind of computer is the brain?

[Philosophy Explorer]

That's the question this article poses. The answer will eventually come from study and research. For now we can only speculate:

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/06/28/op ... ?referrer=

PhilX

[van Keister]

The brain is no computer! When computers have intuition, intelligence, aesthetic experience, passion, creativity, (need I go on?) then I'll listen to you arguments....

[Arising_uk]

Computationally it's a massively parallel neural-net or a set of interacting massively parallel neural-nets.

[Hobbes' Choice]

What kind of computer is the brain?

A natural organic evolved one.

There is nothing to compare to an artifactual computer, unless you treat them both like black boxes and compare outputs. This reveals that that are fundamentally different, regardless of the material structures, as well as different because of their material structures.

[blu]

I think that article dismisses too casually the problem of consciousness. It is generally supposed that consciousness arises from the brain, or at least from some physical system in the body, but nobody has come close to demonstrating the mechanism by which that happens. Until that is explained, any comparison of the brain with computers is limited to the sort of behaviour which would occur in a philosophical zombie.