| Look at it this way: programs are a list of procedural rules, combined with input to yield output. Computers are physical objects that take that input, follow the rules (the program), and produce the output. Humans (via intelligence) can also follow these rules, and produce the same output for a given input. So if some arrangement of forks gave rise to intelligence, then they would necessarily be a computer. The central question is whether intelligence is something over and above computation. Coming down on this would be require either: (a) an example of something intelligence can do that a computer (with the right program) cannot, or (b) some proof as to why no such example can exist. I'm not confident we have the right philosophical tools to even approach this question right now. What does it mean for human intelligence to do a thing that a computer cannot? Say you do X -- I might just ask you to write down how you did it. If you are precise enough in how you did it, you've just given me a program. Alternatively, even if you can't write it down, it seems plausible we could (in theory) write down the rules of physics. Then, given as input the state of your brain, we might iterate those rules forward and produce the output. Going a bit off track here, but it seems to me that the only way intelligence could not be computed would be if intelligence was in some way non-physical -- and more, causal (so, not just epiphenomenal), it would actually have to be useful. |