Is trying to figure out how the brain works by looking at synapses and blood flow and electric fields similar to trying to see how an iPhone works by looking at transistors and electric fields?
* https://www.cell.com/cancer-cell/fulltext/S1535-6108%2802%29... Can a biologist fix a radio?
* https://journals.plos.org/ploscompbiol/article?id=10.1371/jo... Could a Neuroscientist Understand a Microprocessor?
Would they get another iPhone if they break the first one?
The task is no different than any other scientific endeavor, from biology to physics: they'll keep poking and prodding at it in different ways, making observations, accumulating and discarding hypotheses, until some kind of coherent and useful model becomes apparent. Hell, given sufficient supply of iPhones, this would be much easier than figuring out the brain - there's lot of value in short feedback loops and being able to do meaningful experiments on the cheap.
> Is trying to figure out how the brain works by looking at synapses and blood flow and electric fields similar to trying to see how an iPhone works by looking at transistors and electric fields?
They would be looking at that (after speed-running the relevant part of the "tech tree" to understand fields and transistors), and importantly, how it correlates with observed behavior such as ChatGPT saying something, or crashing the weird fire-breathing demon plane???! simulacra in Grand Theft Auto V. Same is the case with intelligence, except we're not free to circuit-bend people the same way the 1923 scientists would be with their iPhones, due to ethics and stuffs.
Would it still be possible without Boolean Logic (1847)? Of course they'd have to realize that it applied. [1]
Earliest possible date they'd be successful might be post-Leibniz in the 1690's. [1]
Of course, there's an argument to be made that it'd not be possible before Alan Turing's work in 1935/1936-ish. On the other hand, in 1923 you'd already have most of the ideas that lead to Turing's insights.
Does anyone have a term for this from philosophy of science literature?
If you want to ruin your day, you can try and parse through the SEP page on reductionism. It's a doozy. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-reduction/