Searle: Is the Brain a Digital Computer?

Ah I think I understand...so, in Arvan's terms, the physical is the 2-D information horizon but consciousness is the reader of information that actualizes the possibilities of the "code" on the "disk" that is the 2-D plane?

Yes! His essay is a good overview of the P2P simulation hypothesis and I agreed with it. As far as 2D... I suppose you could say all dimensions can be reduced to just 2 but I don’t know how useful that is except to draw analogy to a matrix.

Any analogy between the brain and a computer can only be pushed so far, but I've only ever heard the brain described as "analogue" rather than "digital".

Can you elaborate a little? Modern computers contain floating point hardware so that analogue processes can be performed digitally - so this isn't really an important distinction

Can you elaborate a little? Modern computers contain floating point hardware so that analogue processes can be performed digitally - so this isn't really an important distinction

a) floating-point is still digital. It isn't analogue. It also leads to the possibility of errors, such as adding a very small value to a very large one and leaving the result unaffected, to name but one.

b) digital computers process things sequentially. Analogue processes take place simultaneously. There are various attempts at work-arounds, which depending on the application may be a simple matter, or hugely expensive, or simply impractical to the extent of being impossible.

a) floating-point is still digital. It isn't analogue. It also leads to the possibility of errors, such as adding a very small value to a very large one and leaving the result unaffected, to name but one.

Well it you use 64-bit floating point - which most scientific work does now, those errors are extremely small. An analog device will also contain errors - they just aren't explicitly quantifiable, as they are in the digital case. 

b) digital computers process things sequentially. Analogue processes take place simultaneously. There are various attempts at work-arounds, which depending on the application may be a simple matter, or hugely expensive, or simply impractical to the extent of being impossible.

Well I'd say the digital vs analog question and the serial vs parallel questions are more or less orthogonal. You can have examples of all four possibilities. Besides, parallel processing can only deliver extra speed over a serial calculation, so it won't deliver anything new - such as qualia.