Can the Human Brain be Simulated?

In order to simulate a human brain, you would need to start with--what else?--a human brain. Here is an analogy.  Suppose you are a model-builder on board a large ship, and the captain asks you to make a model of the ship.

After a few days, you present him with what you believe to be a very accurate 1/100 scale model.  But the captain is not pleased.  You left out one very important part of the ship:  the model of the ship that the ship now contains..

You soon realize that even if you make a micro-model of the ship to include within the model, you would then have to make an even smaller model to fit within the model, and so on in an infinite regression of ever-smaller models.

Walk the plank.

The eye cannot see itself, and therefore, the brain cannot model itself, not even in a computer simulation.  Otherwise, the simulation could create a simulation of itself, ad infinitum.

However, an intelligent alien exo-creature from the planet Karabonzo in principle could make a model of the human brain, since he (or it, or zer) does not think with one.  Perhaps we could make one of his.  And then it would make one of ours.  Don't get me started on that.

More to the point, the brain is only an instrument of thought, not the source of thought.
Cosmic consciousness surrounds the brain, instead of emerging from it.

In this sense, a working model of the human brain could be made, but it would not be conscious.
Of course I could be wrong.