We are no different than computers

[emjay]

Exactly, they are more robust than any digital gate, and -could- function as universal gates.  Charles Peirce first showed that NOR could execute the function of any other gate in series or parallel (or some combination).  Henry Sheffer proved (and importantly, relative to Peirce, published...lol), using NAND, that there was such a thing as a universal gate, upon which any logical function could be built.  

see Peirces Arrow, Peirce generally being the more well known not only because he was the first to publish his work, but also because he was a pioneer when it came to demonstrating that electronic gates could be built.  Obviously useful in hindsight.....lol

It is important, for any theory of mind invoking computation or logical operations, that this was found to be true.  Because whatever we may choose to conceptualize natures role in all of this one thing can be said with confidence.  Nature is not a designer, not a programmer.  It is a much simpler construction paradigm that nature toes the line on.  If nature were capable of "blindly producing" a thinking machine, repetition of components would, by the nature of it's constructive means, feature heavily.  We would not expect to find task specific gates in greater abundance than universal gates, if this were an "accidental computer".  We would expect, instead, to find something very much like a neural net comprised of universals, in structure - which is what we -do- find....yet another reason I feel that computation is a powerful explanation for at least -some- of the effects we attribute to mind, even if I could not, with certainty, say that computation explains it all, to everyones satisfaction (or even my own).

Check this out:

Explicit Logic Circuits Discriminate Neural States

Can you let me know if this is exactly what you're talking about, and there's not some subtle difference between it and comp mind? Because if it is I'm sold! That's an incredible article, albeit one which would take a lot of study to understand fully, and not only does it demonstrate NAND and other logic gates but it also describes the networks, shows that they're feasible given what is known about the brain, and the models accurately predict what perceptual states to expect for given inputs. And more than that it asks and answers the sorts of questions that have bugged me for years, such as how colour is (or could be) processed. Thanks ever so much for putting me onto this theory. Never in my wildest dreams would I have thought that there could be another type of processing going on in the brain, alongside normal neural networking, to account for perception, but now it looks extremely feasible. Cheers