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Neural circuits and block diagrams

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 October 1999

J. J. C. Smart
J. J. C. Smart
Affiliation:
Philosophy Program, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, Canberra ACT 0200, [email protected] coombs.anu.edu.au/dept/RSSS/philosophy/people/smart.html
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Abstract

This commentary is intended to illuminate Gold's & Stoljar's main contentions by exploiting a favorite comparison, namely, that between biology and electronics. Roughly, and leaving out Darwinian theory and the like, biology is physics and chemistry plus natural history just as electronics is physics plus wiring diagrams. Natural history (even that discovered by sophisticated apparatus such as electron microscopes) contains generalizations, not laws. Psychology and cognitive science typically give more abstract explanations, as do “block diagrams” in electronics, and are less dispensable.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 22 , Issue 5 , October 1999 , pp. 849
Copyright
© 1999 Cambridge University Press

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