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Updated: Jan 3, 2026

Assessment and Communication for People with Disorders of Consciousness
Published on: August 1, 2017
Codes, communication and cognition
1Department of Psychology, Université du Québec à Montréal, Montréal (Québec) H3C 3P8, Canada; Department of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, SouthamptonSO17 1TW, UK. harnad@soton.ac.uk.
Abstract:
Brette criticizes the notion of neural coding because it seems to entail that neural signals need to "decoded" by or for some receiver in the head. If that were so, then neural coding would indeed be homuncular (Brette calls it "dualistic"), requiring an entity to decipher the code. But I think Brette's plea to think instead in terms of complex, interactive causal throughput is preaching to the converted. Turing (not Shannon) has already shown the way. In any case, the metaphor of neural coding has little to do with the symbol grounding problem.
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