Seeing red

[bennyboy]

@Benny.  

That's because the ability of a system to express the functions of boolean operations is what counts, not the manner in which it arrives at them (even if that manner is entirely chance).  If "chaos" is fueling the comp the assemblies are no more or less logic gates than any other.  You probably think..that the mind/brain cannot be modeled in some particular type of logic gate....and I can see why you would think so, but it's a law of comp principle that any comp system can be built by repitition of  just one universal gate in -any- implementation.  I think that neurons are more powerful than the digital or analog gates you might find in any of your devices.  It's unlikely that we're built like a tablet pc, or an old cell phone.

Given what we know about NTs, hormones, and the chemistry of neurons that Emjay pretty well summarized, it seems to me that there are brain parts and systems (or even local neuronal pathways) that do either or both. Obviously, if I ask "Is this thing a pen?" at some point there's going to be a gate, at least an implied one, since a boolean answer is expected: the inputs being "pen-ness" and a symbolic representation of an object.