Do Brains Compute, and How Can We Tell?

Brains are paradigmatically information-processing systems, and this is often taken to mean that brains perform computation, and furthermore, that we can both explain and reproduce the brain's capabilities by elucidating the computations involved. But is there really some distinctive activity "computing" that all and only brains and computers perform?  Are there principles we can use to guide us from observable facts about brain activity to facts about what computations those activities constitute?  I'll briefly survey philosophical theories of computational implementation, and then look at three issues they raise for the idea of neural computation:  interpretation, indeterminacy, and systematicity. If what determines what computation a computer is performing are the conventions that dictate how inputs and outputs should be interpreted, what is doing that interpretation in the brain?  When many interpretations are available, on what basis can we privilege one of those in explanation?  And finally, should we expect systematicity of the kind exhibited by a formal language in the neural code?

Speaker: Rosa Cao, Stanford

Room 126