Imagine that the EU flagship Human Brain Project has succeeded in producing a highperformance computer that can simulate the entire network of 8.6×1010 neurones and
their 1015 connections.
(a) Will it be easier to understand this artificial brain function than to understand the human brain?
(b) Can such an artificial brain help to identify the relevant emergent mental structures? Or put differently, can we understand how the brain gives rise to mental activity without identifying the relevant macroscopic collective building blocks?
(c) Will an artificial one-to-one representation of the brain in itself explain cognition and mental processes?
(d) Could we ‘educate’ this machine brain in order to develop a human mind? Think in terms of system and its environment.