Computomorphism

The tendency to use analogy to computers and computing to explain and simplify complex biological systems and phenomenon is a recently acquired tendency of human psychology and is seen most often in pop culture writing about technology and neuroscience. The application of computomorphism in neuroscience gave rise to the compulogical fallacy. In their classic work, The Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience, M.R. Bennet and P.M.S. Hacker gave the name mereological fallacy to the logical disorder plaguing much neuroscientific thought at the time. Then, and still to this day, neuroscientists commonly assigned various cognitive attributes to the brain that can only logically be attributed to a whole human being. Examples include things like having memories, desiring things, seeing, tasting, judging, evaluating, etc. Their intent was to show the logical contradictions that arise as a result of this erroneous view of cognition.

In an analogous fashion to the mereological fallacy, the computer sciences and other technological fields, along with those who write and talk about them, have assigned various cognitive attributes to computers (computomorphism) that can only logically be assigned to human persons and some (non-human) animals. I have dubbed this the compulogical fallacy in honor of Bennet and Hackers work. In essence the compulogical fallacy describes the logical contradictions that arise when we apply characteristic, behaviors, attributes, skills, and/or abilities to machines and computers (abiological entities) that can only rightly be applied to human beings and some (non-human) animals (biological entities).