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A Conversation With Einstein's Brain

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Douglas R. Hofstadter discusses the idea of whether or not replicating a brain in written form is feasible in his short story A Conversation with Einstein’s Brain. The story uses two characters, Achilles and Tortoise, in order to contrast the opinions of whether or not the theory of recreating a conversation with Einstein is possible. Achilles is a human who is seemingly a disciple of the far more intelligent Tortoise. The two converse about the possibility of having a true conversation of Einstein, despite the fact that he is diseased.
The Tortoise believes that if a person were to map out each individual neuron within the brain, put it into book form, then that person will be able to have a conversation with the book. Although the book may be billions upon billions of pages, the theory is that a person will be able to communicate with the book. Inside of the book will essentially …show more content…

In my eyes, the book on its own cannot be its own mind and brain. The mind and brain in my opinion are two different entities, as the mind is able to create abstraction and thoughts, whereas the brain is just the physical object. With that concept in mind, I believe that the book is just a brain. The information is just there and readily available for the person to use. It would be possible to extrapolate data from the book to obtain basic information; however, the book would never be able to think on its own. Even if the book has an operator at all hours, there could be no potential for constant thought of the book. There is just information, but no processing of what is actually going on inside of the mind. The operator cannot take on the persona of the book, because the operator is within its own restrictions of consciousness. If it is a human, that human has his own life and thoughts, so he is merely someone translating the language of the

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