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  Nick Willmott commented on criticism #558.

You may consider it banal but is it false?

An OR gate takes two bits of information and transforms them into a single bit of information by following a specific rule. It clearly processes information. And if that’s true for an OR gate, why not for the brain?

#558 · Dennis Hackethal, about 2 months ago

You're not understanding me. I'm not trying to argue such things don't process information.

I can't argue against "Is the brain a computer?" + "Anything that processes information is a computer" combination. If we're taking an essentialist definition of the word computer then we should ditch the term and the the title of the page should just be "Does the brain process information?" - which I have no interest in objecting against.

My original attempted criticism was against the statement that anything processing information is a computer. (Taking a deflationary concept of a computer is not what I presumed was meant in the title of the discussion).

Parking the word computer aside, based on the resultant thread, more interesting questions to me are:
1) What is the demarcation between something that processes information and something that does not?
2) What is the demarcation between something that processes information and the human brain?

About 2 months ago · ‘Is the Brain a Computer?’