Indulging in another round of the old computationalism debate reminded me of a post I’ve been meaning to write since my Blog Anniversary this past July. The debate involves a central question: Can the human mind be numerically simulated? (A more subtle question asks: Is the human mind algorithmic?)

An argument against is the assertion, “Simulated water isn’t wet,” which makes the point that numeric simulations are abstractions with no physical effects. A common counter is that simulations run on physical systems, so the argument is invalid.

Which makes no sense to me; here’s why…

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