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Emily Alspector's picture

What is a system?

Submitted by Emily Alspector on Wed, 01/30/2008 - 2:55pm.
Well, since I am still not entirely convinced that brain=behavior, this model does not account for the mind/soul/self/person, whatever you want to call it. There is no free will? No higher plane? Even with the switch from stimulus to input and response to output, the nervous system is still just that, a system. Even if it is capable of
  • different outputs for the same input
  • taking in inputs with no output
  • generating outputs with no input
  • a "semi-autonomous" input/output box consisting of input/output boxes
then what exactly is the point of the system? Aren't systems supposed to be reliable and predictable? This makes me think that there is more to us than this "system" because inexplicable things occur within it. Pointing out these inexplicable things does not justify the existence of a system, it only causes me to question its existence, or at least, to question its independence of something else.

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