A debate flares up every few years in neuroscience, asking whether the brain is a computer or whether this is “just a metaphor,” or “just semantics.” The question goes back a long way, and has probably been more common in philosophical than neuroscientific circles. But a recent Frontiers special issue raised the debate again, and exemplified its different sides perfectly. One side argues that the brain is a computer because it satisfies computer science’s definition of “computer,” and therefore neuroscience is right to conceptualize it that way (Richards & Lillicrap, 2022). The other side argu