Likeness has a direction; the direction of inheritance. Thus, a son is a likeness of his father. We realize that the father is the source, and the son an instance of likeness.

If I draw a tree, the likeness descends from the tree to the sketch. This is about as much ‘like machines’ as we can be. That is to say: barely. Really, it would be simpler to say not at all.

Organisms are not like computers or machines. Computers and machines may mimic or hyperbolize observable capacities of natural and organismal function or appearance -in certain highly limited and specific ways-.

Your brain is not a computer in the same way your mouth is not a speaker. You are an organism, not an artifact. Your heart is not a pump. The whole world is actually your ‘brain’. The models we are taught are narrowly useful, wisely applied in appropriate contexts. As guides to reality they are ridiculous and will actually destroy our intelligence.

You can only be said to have parts -as a convenience of description-. Those parts -are not now and never will be machines or even mechanical-. Those ideas are also conveniences. And if we forget this, the costs will be unbearable, and profoundly catastrophic.