Thereās a reason I started out by calling it a nitpick. š
Iām not making a claim about the normal way we wind up with āa machine that runs an algorithmā, such that one can just swap in other things for āruns an algorithmā, so it was perhaps a mistake for me to justify it with āyou commonly start with...ā. My point is more that the hardware-software distinction generalizes to the case of mechanical adders because you start with a logic gate diagram here, but not to the brain because it evolved in a different way.
As an analogy, if one called an eye āa machine that bends light according to an ray optics diagram[1]ā, that would be similarly misleading. The question is, I guess, whether āalgorithmā means something more like āray optics diagramā (āa set of instructions to be followed in calculationsā) or whether it means something less premeditated.
not sure whether thatās the right term and whether ray optics diagrams are necessarily used for designing cameras...
My full position is a bit subtle, because itās quite hard to find a materialist-rationalist version of the your statement in the OP that I would fully agree with. The word ādesignā is kinda objectionable because it implies a designer. Even āif one studied the brain well enough, one would come up with a model that could be used to substitute for the brain with equivalent behaviorā is something Iām skeptical of. (But that skepticism is a bit separate from my objection above. Though both objections are motivated by a worry that one goes a bit too quickly from āsupernaturalism is falseā to ānatural things are like artificeā.)
The best I can come up with without coining wholly new words to describe it is to just have a disclaimer, perhaps in the comments like me, pointing out that thereās still a distinction.
Calling it a nitpick because in this case I donāt see any followup errors that would be made as a result of this terminology in this case from this article.
Thereās a reason I started out by calling it a nitpick. š
Iām not making a claim about the normal way we wind up with āa machine that runs an algorithmā, such that one can just swap in other things for āruns an algorithmā, so it was perhaps a mistake for me to justify it with āyou commonly start with...ā. My point is more that the hardware-software distinction generalizes to the case of mechanical adders because you start with a logic gate diagram here, but not to the brain because it evolved in a different way.
As an analogy, if one called an eye āa machine that bends light according to an ray optics diagram[1]ā, that would be similarly misleading. The question is, I guess, whether āalgorithmā means something more like āray optics diagramā (āa set of instructions to be followed in calculationsā) or whether it means something less premeditated.
not sure whether thatās the right term and whether ray optics diagrams are necessarily used for designing cameras...
My full position is a bit subtle, because itās quite hard to find a materialist-rationalist version of the your statement in the OP that I would fully agree with. The word ādesignā is kinda objectionable because it implies a designer. Even āif one studied the brain well enough, one would come up with a model that could be used to substitute for the brain with equivalent behaviorā is something Iām skeptical of. (But that skepticism is a bit separate from my objection above. Though both objections are motivated by a worry that one goes a bit too quickly from āsupernaturalism is falseā to ānatural things are like artificeā.)
The best I can come up with without coining wholly new words to describe it is to just have a disclaimer, perhaps in the comments like me, pointing out that thereās still a distinction.
Calling it a nitpick because in this case I donāt see any followup errors that would be made as a result of this terminology in this case from this article.