Unpublished letter re the mind-brain problem

[Walter Eric Johnson]

Richard Vickery (Richard.Vickery at unsw.edu.au) wrote:
: What do you mean by this Ray?  In general if you give a neuron a precise 
: input you will get the same output.  The problem is usually that the input 
: is not exactly the same because the state of the brain is changing 
: constantly (though not in any mystical way) and the neuron is receiving input 
: from thousands of other neurons.  There may also be some synaptic plasticity. 
:  None of this rules out a silicon implementation of a neuron.

Is it really all that precise?  I thought that the selection of synaptic
vesicles is believed to be a probabilistic process and that the actual
pattern of synaptic vesicles could make quite a difference in the results.

Eric Johnson