Kitchens were different then, too--not only what came out of them, but their smells and sounds. A hot pie cooling smells different... from a frozen pie thawing. Oilcloth and linoleum and apples in an open bowl and ruffled rubber aprons make a different aromatic mix from Formica and ceramic tile and mangoes in an acrylic fruit ripener and plastic-coated aprons printed with "Who invited all these tacky people?" And the kitchen sounds. I am not sure that today's kitchen is noisier. But the noises are different. Today you get the song of the food processor and the blender, the intermittent hum of the reefer and the freezer, the buzz-slosh-and-grunt of the dishwasher, the violently audible digestive processes of the waste disposal in the sink. Then it was the whir and clatter of the hand-powered eggbeater, the thunk-thunk-thunk of somebody mashing potatoes, or, in green-pea season, the crisp pop of pea pod and the rattle-rattle-rattle of peas into the pan.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One can imagine a computer simulation of the action of peptides in the hypothalamus that is accurate down to the last synapse. But... equally one can imagine a computer simulation of the oxidation of hydrocarbons in a car engine or the action of digestive processes in a stomach when it is digesting pizza. And the simulation is no more the real thing in the case of the brain than it is in the case of the car or the stomach. Barring miracles, you could not run your car by doing a computer simulation of the oxidation of gasoline, and you could not digest pizza by running the program that simulates such digestion. It seems obvious that a simulation of cognition will similarly not produce the effects of the neurobiology of cognition.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »