In
philosophy of mind
Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...
, the computational theory of mind (CTM), also known as computationalism, is a family of views that hold that the human
mind
The mind is the set of faculties responsible for all mental phenomena. Often the term is also identified with the phenomena themselves. These faculties include thought, imagination, memory, will, and sensation. They are responsible for various m ...
is an
information processing system
An information processor or information processing system, as its name suggests, is a private content (be it electrical, mechanical or biological) which takes information (a sequence of enumerated symbols or states) in one form and processes ( ...
and that cognition and consciousness together are a form of
computation
Computation is any type of arithmetic or non-arithmetic calculation that follows a well-defined model (e.g., an algorithm).
Mechanical or electronic devices (or, historically, people) that perform computations are known as ''computers''. An es ...
.
Warren McCulloch
Warren Sturgis McCulloch (November 16, 1898 – September 24, 1969) was an American neurophysiologist and cybernetician, known for his work on the foundation for certain brain theories and his contribution to the cybernetics movement.Ken Aizawa ( ...
and
Walter Pitts
Walter Harry Pitts, Jr. (23 April 1923 – 14 May 1969) was a logician who worked in the field of computational neuroscience.Smalheiser, Neil R"Walter Pitts", ''Perspectives in Biology and Medicine'', Volume 43, Number 2, Winter 2000, pp. 21 ...
(1943) were the first to suggest that neural activity is computational. They argued that neural computations explain
cognition
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and processes such as: perception, attention, thought, ...
.
[Piccinini, Gualtierro & Bahar, Sonya, 2012. "Neural Computation and the Computational Theory of Cognition" in Cognitive Science. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/cogs.12012] The theory was proposed in its modern form by
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions ...
in 1967, and developed by his PhD student, philosopher, and cognitive scientist
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modu ...
in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
[Horst, Steven, (2005]
"The Computational Theory of Mind"
in ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' Despite being vigorously disputed in
analytic philosophy
Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...
in the 1990s due to work by Putnam himself,
John Searle
John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Mario ...
, and others, the view is common in modern
cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning.
Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
and is presumed by many theorists of
evolutionary psychology
Evolutionary psychology is a theoretical approach in psychology that examines cognition and behavior from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify human psychological adaptations with regards to the ancestral problems they evolv ...
. In the 2000s and 2010s the view has resurfaced in analytic philosophy (Scheutz 2003, Edelman 2008).
The computational theory of mind holds that the mind is a computational system that is realized (i.e. physically implemented) by neural activity in the brain. The theory can be elaborated in many ways and varies largely based on how the term computation is understood. Computation is commonly understood in terms of
Turing machine
A Turing machine is a mathematical model of computation describing an abstract machine that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite the model's simplicity, it is capable of implementing any computer algori ...
s which manipulate symbols according to a rule, in combination with the internal state of the machine. The critical aspect of such a computational model is that we can abstract away from particular physical details of the machine that is implementing the computation.
For example, the appropriate computation could be implemented either by silicon chips or biological neural networks, so long as there is a series of outputs based on manipulations of inputs and internal states, performed according to a rule. CTM, therefore holds that the mind is not simply analogous to a computer program, but that it is literally a computational system.
Computational theories of mind are often said to require
mental representation
A mental representation (or cognitive representation), in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality, or else a mental process that ma ...
because 'input' into a computation comes in the form of symbols or representations of other objects. A computer cannot compute an actual object but must interpret and represent the object in some form and then compute the representation. The computational theory of mind is related to the
representational theory of mind
A mental representation (or cognitive representation), in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality, or else a mental process that ma ...
in that they both require that mental states are representations. However, the representational theory of mind shifts the focus to the symbols being manipulated. This approach better accounts for systematicity and productivity.
In Fodor's original views, the computational theory of mind is also related to the
language of thought The language of thought hypothesis (LOTH), sometimes known as thought ordered mental expression (TOME), is a view in linguistics, philosophy of mind and cognitive science, forwarded by American philosopher Jerry Fodor. It describes the nature of th ...
. The language of thought theory allows the mind to process more complex representations with the help of semantics. (See below in semantics of mental states).
Recent work has suggested that we make a distinction between the mind and cognition. Building from the tradition of McCulloch and Pitts, the ''computational theory of cognition'' (CTC) states that neural computations explain cognition.
The computational theory of mind asserts that not only cognition, but also phenomenal consciousness or
qualia
In philosophy of mind, qualia ( or ; singular form: quale) are defined as individual instances of subjective, conscious experience. The term ''qualia'' derives from the Latin neuter plural form (''qualia'') of the Latin adjective '' quālis'' () ...
, are computational. That is to say, CTM entails CTC. While phenomenal consciousness could fulfill some other functional role, computational theory of cognition leaves open the possibility that some aspects of the mind could be non-computational. CTC, therefore, provides an important explanatory framework for understanding neural networks, while avoiding counter-arguments that center around phenomenal consciousness.
"Computer metaphor"
Computational theory of mind is not the same as the computer metaphor, comparing the mind to a modern-day digital computer.
[ Pinker, Steven. ]The Blank Slate
''The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature'' is a best-selling 2002 book by the cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker, in which the author makes a case against tabula rasa models in the social sciences, arguing that human behavior is s ...
. New York: Penguin. 2002 Computational theory just uses some of the same principles as those found in digital computing.
While the computer metaphor draws an analogy between the mind as software and the brain as hardware, CTM is the claim that the mind is a computational system. More specifically, it states that a computational simulation of a mind is sufficient for the actual presence of a mind, and that a mind truly can be simulated computationally.
'Computational system' is not meant to mean a modern-day electronic computer. Rather, a computational system is a symbol manipulator that follows step-by-step functions to compute input and form output.
Alan Turing
Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...
describes this type of computer in his concept of a
Turing machine
A Turing machine is a mathematical model of computation describing an abstract machine that manipulates symbols on a strip of tape according to a table of rules. Despite the model's simplicity, it is capable of implementing any computer algori ...
.
Early proponents
One of the earliest proponents of the computational theory of mind was
Thomas Hobbes
Thomas Hobbes ( ; 5/15 April 1588 – 4/14 December 1679) was an English philosopher, considered to be one of the founders of modern political philosophy. Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book ''Leviathan'', in which he expounds an influent ...
, who said, "by reasoning, I understand computation. And to compute is to collect the sum of many things added together at the same time, or to know the remainder when one thing has been taken from another. To reason, therefore, is the same as to add or to subtract." Since Hobbes lived before the contemporary identification of computing with instantiating effective procedures, he cannot be interpreted as explicitly endorsing the computational theory of mind, in the contemporary sense.
Causal picture of thoughts
At the heart of the computational theory of mind is the idea that thoughts are a form of computation, and a computation is by definition a systematic set of rules for the relations among representations. This means that a mental state represents something if and only if there is some causal correlation between the mental state and that particular thing. An example would be seeing dark clouds and thinking "clouds mean rain", where there is a correlation between the thought of the clouds and rain, as the clouds causing rain. This is sometimes known as ''natural meaning''. Conversely, there is another side to the causality of thoughts and that is the non-natural representation of thoughts. An example would be seeing a red traffic light and thinking "red means stop", there is nothing about the color red that indicates it represents stopping, and thus is just a convention that has been invented, similar to languages and their abilities to form representations.
Semantics of mental states
The computational theory of mind states that the mind functions as a symbolic operator, and that mental representations are symbolic representations; just as the
semantics
Semantics (from grc, σημαντικός ''sēmantikós'', "significant") is the study of reference, meaning, or truth. The term can be used to refer to subfields of several distinct disciplines, including philosophy
Philosophy (f ...
of language are the features of words and sentences that relate to their meaning, the semantics of mental states are those meanings of representations, the definitions of the 'words' of the
language of thought The language of thought hypothesis (LOTH), sometimes known as thought ordered mental expression (TOME), is a view in linguistics, philosophy of mind and cognitive science, forwarded by American philosopher Jerry Fodor. It describes the nature of th ...
. If these basic mental states can have a particular meaning just as words in a language do, then this means that more complex mental states (thoughts) can be created, even if they have never been encountered before. Just as new sentences that are read can be understood even if they have never been encountered before, as long as the basic components are understood, and it is syntactically correct. For example: "I have eaten plum pudding every day of this fortnight." While it's doubtful many have seen this particular configuration of words, nonetheless, most readers should be able to glean an understanding of this sentence because it is syntactically correct and the constituent parts are understood.
Criticism
A range of arguments have been proposed against physicalist conceptions used in computational theories of mind.
An early, though indirect, criticism of the computational theory of mind comes from philosopher
John Searle
John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Mario ...
. In his thought experiment known as the
Chinese room
The Chinese room argument holds that a digital computer executing a program cannot have a " mind," "understanding" or "consciousness," regardless of how intelligently or human-like the program may make the computer behave. The argument was pres ...
, Searle attempts to refute the claims that
artificially intelligent agents can be said to have
intentionality
''Intentionality'' is the power of minds to be about something: to represent or to stand for things, properties and states of affairs. Intentionality is primarily ascribed to mental states, like perceptions, beliefs or desires, which is why it ha ...
and
understanding
Understanding is a psychological process related to an abstract or physical object, such as a person, situation, or message whereby one is able to use concepts to model that object.
Understanding is a relation between the knower and an object o ...
and that these systems, because they can be said to be minds themselves, are sufficient for the study of the human mind. Searle asks us to imagine that there is a man in a room with no way of communicating with anyone or anything outside of the room except for a piece of paper with symbols written on it that is passed under the door. With the paper, the man is to use a series of provided rule books to return paper containing different symbols. Unknown to the man in the room, these symbols are of a Chinese language, and this process generates a conversation that a Chinese speaker outside of the room can actually understand. Searle contends that the man in the room does not understand the Chinese conversation. This is essentially what the computational theory of mind presents us—a model in which the mind simply decodes symbols and outputs more symbols. Searle argues that this is not real understanding or intentionality. This was originally written as a repudiation of the idea that computers work like minds.
Searle has further raised questions about what exactly constitutes a computation:
the wall behind my back is right now implementing the WordStar
WordStar is a word processor application for microcomputers. It was published by MicroPro International and originally written for the CP/M-80 operating system, and later written also for MS-DOS and other 16-bit PC OSes. Rob Barnaby was the sol ...
program, because there is some pattern of molecule movements that is isomorphic with the formal structure of WordStar. But if the wall is implementing WordStar, if it is a big enough wall it is implementing any program, including any program implemented in the brain.
Objections like Searle's might be called insufficiency objections. They claim that computational theories of mind fail because computation is insufficient to account for some capacity of the mind. Arguments from qualia, such as Frank Jackson's
knowledge argument
The knowledge argument (also known as Mary's room or Mary the super-scientist) is a philosophical thought experiment proposed by Frank Jackson in his article "Epiphenomenal Qualia" (1982) and extended in "What Mary Didn't Know" (1986). The experim ...
, can be understood as objections to computational theories of mind in this way—though they take aim at physicalist conceptions of the mind in general, and not computational theories specifically.
There are also objections which are directly tailored for computational theories of mind.
Putnam himself (see in particular ''Representation and Reality'' and the first part of ''Renewing Philosophy'') became a prominent critic of computationalism for a variety of reasons, including ones related to Searle's Chinese room arguments, questions of world-word reference relations, and thoughts about the mind-body relationship. Regarding functionalism in particular, Putnam has claimed along lines similar to, but more general than Searle's arguments, that the question of whether the human mind ''can'' implement computational states is not relevant to the question of the nature of mind, because "every ordinary open system realizes every abstract finite automaton."
Computationalists have responded by aiming to develop criteria describing what exactly counts as an implementation.
[
]
Roger Penrose
Sir Roger Penrose (born 8 August 1931) is an English mathematician, mathematical physicist, philosopher of science and Nobel Laureate in Physics. He is Emeritus Rouse Ball Professor of Mathematics in the University of Oxford, an emeritus fello ...
has proposed the idea that the human mind does not use a knowably sound calculation procedure to understand and discover mathematical intricacies. This would mean that a normal
Turing complete
Alan Mathison Turing (; 23 June 1912 – 7 June 1954) was an English mathematician, computer scientist, logician, cryptanalyst, philosopher, and theoretical biologist. Turing was highly influential in the development of theoretical com ...
computer would not be able to ascertain certain mathematical truths that human minds can. G.Hirase reinforced his idea from a slightly different point of view.
Pancomputationalism
Supporters of CTM are faced with a simple yet important question whose answer has proved elusive and controversial: what does it take for a physical system (such as a mind, or an artificial computer) to perform computations? A very straightforward account is based on a simple mapping between abstract mathematical computations and physical systems: a system performs computation C if and only if there is a mapping between a sequence of states individuated by C and a sequence of states individuated by a physical description of the system
Putnam (1988) and
Searle Searle may refer to:
__NOTOC__ Persons
* Searle (surname)
* J. Searle Dawley (1877–1949), American film director, producer, screenwriter, stage actor and playwright
* Searle Turton (born 1979), Canadian politician
Places
* Serle, a comune in Lomb ...
(1992) argue that this simple mapping account (SMA) trivializes the empirical import of computational descriptions.
As Putnam put it, “everything is a Probabilistic Automaton under some Description”. Even rocks, walls, and buckets of water—contrary to appearances—are computing systems.
Gualtiero Piccinini
Gualtiero Piccinini (born 1970) is an Italian–American philosopher known for his work on the nature of mind and computation as well as on how to integrate psychology and neuroscience. He is Curators' Distinguished Professor in the Philosophy De ...
identifies different versions of Pancomputationalism.
In response to the trivialization criticism, and to restrict SMA, philosophers of mind have offered different accounts of computational systems. These typically include causal account, semantic account, syntactic account, and mechanistic account.
Instead of a semantic restriction, the syntactic account imposes a syntactic restriction.
The mechanistic account was first introduced by
Gualtiero Piccinini
Gualtiero Piccinini (born 1970) is an Italian–American philosopher known for his work on the nature of mind and computation as well as on how to integrate psychology and neuroscience. He is Curators' Distinguished Professor in the Philosophy De ...
in 2007.
Prominent scholars
*
Daniel Dennett
Daniel Clement Dennett III (born March 28, 1942) is an American philosopher, writer, and cognitive scientist whose research centers on the philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and philosophy of biology, particularly as those fields relat ...
proposed the
multiple drafts model
Daniel Dennett's multiple drafts model of consciousness is a physicalist theory of consciousness based upon cognitivism, which views the mind in terms of information processing. The theory is described in depth in his book, ''Consciousness Explai ...
, in which consciousness seems linear but is actually blurry and gappy, distributed over space and time in the brain. Consciousness is the computation, there is no extra step or "
Cartesian theater
"Cartesian theater" is a derisive term coined by philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett to refer pointedly to a defining aspect of what he calls Cartesian materialism, which he considers to be the often unacknowledged remnants of Carte ...
" in which you become conscious of the computation.
*
David Marr proposed that cognitive processes have three levels of description: the computational level (which describes that computational problem (i.e., input/output mapping) computed by the cognitive process); the algorithmic level (which presents the algorithm used for computing the problem postulated at the computational level); and the implementational level (which describes the physical implementation of the algorithm postulated at the algorithmic level in biological matter, e.g. the brain). (Marr 1981)
*
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions ...
proposed
functionalism to describe consciousness, asserting that it is the computation that equates to consciousness, regardless of whether the computation is operating in a brain, in a computer, or in a "brain in a vat."
*
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modu ...
argues that mental states, such as beliefs and desires, are relations between individuals and mental representations. He maintains that these representations can only be correctly explained in terms of a language of thought (LOT) in the mind. Further, this language of thought itself is codified in the brain, not just a useful explanatory tool. Fodor adheres to a species of functionalism, maintaining that thinking and other mental processes consist primarily of computations operating on the syntax of the representations that make up the language of thought. In later work (''Concepts'' and ''The Elm and the Expert''), Fodor has refined and even questioned some of his original computationalist views, and adopted a highly modified version of LOT (see ''LOT2'').
*
Georges Rey
Georges Leon Rey (born 1945) is an American philosopher. He is a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland.
Biography
Rey received a doctoral degree in philosophy from Harvard University in 1978. His thesis was titled ''The possibi ...
, professor at the
University of Maryland
The University of Maryland, College Park (University of Maryland, UMD, or simply Maryland) is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of M ...
, builds on Jerry Fodor's representational theory of mind to produce his own version of a Computational/Representational Theory of Thought.
*
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
P ...
described a "language instinct," an evolved, built-in capacity to learn language (if not writing). His 1997 book
How the Mind Works
''How the Mind Works'' is a 1997 book by the Canadian-American cognitive scientist Steven Pinker, in which the author attempts to explain some of the human mind's poorly understood functions and quirks in evolutionary terms. Drawing heavily on th ...
sought to popularize the computational theory of mind for wide audiences.
*
Ulric Neisser
Ulric Richard Gustav Neisser (December 8, 1928 – February 17, 2012) was a German-American psychologist, Cornell University professor, and member of the US National Academy of Sciences. He has been referred to as the "father of cognitive ps ...
coined the term 'cognitive psychology' in his book published in 1967 (''Cognitive Psychology''), wherein Neisser characterizes people as dynamic information-processing systems whose mental operations might be described in computational terms.
Alternative theories
* Classical
associationism
Associationism is the idea that mental process
Cognition refers to "the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience, and the senses". It encompasses all aspects of intellectual functions and pr ...
*
Connectionism
Connectionism refers to both an approach in the field of cognitive science that hopes to explain mental phenomena using artificial neural networks (ANN) and to a wide range of techniques and algorithms using ANNs in the context of artificial in ...
*
Enactivism
Enactivism is a position in cognitive science that argues that cognition arises through a dynamic interaction between an acting organism and its environment. It claims that the environment of an organism is brought about, or enacted, by the active ...
*
Memory-prediction framework
The memory-prediction framework is a theory of brain function created by Jeff Hawkins and described in his 2004 book ''On Intelligence''. This theory concerns the role of the mammalian neocortex and its associations with the hippocampi and the th ...
*
Perceptual Control Theory Perceptual control theory (PCT) is a model of behavior based on the properties of negative feedback control loops. A control loop maintains a sensed variable at or near a reference value by means of the effects of its outputs upon that variable, as ...
*
Practopoiesis
An adaptive system is a set of interacting or interdependent entities, real or abstract, forming an integrated whole that together are able to respond to environmental changes or changes in the interacting parts, in a way analogous to either conti ...
*
Situated cognition Situated cognition is a theory that posits that knowing is inseparable from doing by arguing that all knowledge is situated in activity bound to social, cultural and physical contexts.
Under this assumption, which requires an epistemological shift ...
See also
*
Artificial consciousness
Artificial consciousness (AC), also known as machine consciousness (MC) or synthetic consciousness (; ), is a field related to artificial intelligence and cognitive robotics. The aim of the theory of artificial consciousness is to "Define that wh ...
*
Artificial philosophy
Artificial philosophy is a philosophical branch conceived by author Louis Molnarhttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/267156955_A_Step_Beyond_AI_Artificial_Philosophy "article: Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence and Applications", ResearchGat ...
*
Cognitivism (psychology)
In psychology, cognitivism is a theoretical framework for understanding the mind that gained credence in the 1950s. The movement was a response to behaviorism, which cognitivists said neglected to explain cognition. Cognitive psychology derived i ...
*
Constructivist epistemology
Constructivism is a view in the philosophy of science that maintains that scientific knowledge is constructed by the scientific community, which seeks to measure and construct models of the natural world. According to the constructivist, natura ...
*
Determinism
Determinism is a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes. Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have developed from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and consi ...
*
Enchanted loom The enchanted loom is a famous metaphor for the human brain invented by the pioneering neuroscientist Charles S. Sherrington in a passage from his 1942 book ''Man on his nature'', in which he poetically describes his conception of what happens in th ...
*
Mind–body problem
The mind–body problem is a philosophical debate concerning the relationship between thought and consciousness in the human mind, and the brain as part of the physical body. The debate goes beyond addressing the mere question of how mind and bo ...
*
Simulated reality
The simulation theory is the hypothesis that reality could be simulated—for example by quantum computer simulation—to a degree indistinguishable from "true" reality. It could contain conscious minds that may or may not know that they live i ...
*
Stimulus-Response model
References
Further reading
*
C. Randy Gallistel
Charles Ransom Gallistel (born May 18, 1941) is an Emeritus Professor of Psychology at Rutgers University. He is an expert in the cognitive processes of learning and memory, using animal models to carry out research on these topics. Gallistel is ...
''Learning and Representation.'' In R. Menzel (Ed) ''Learning Theory and Behavior.'' Vol 1 of ''Learning and Memory - A Comprehensive Reference.'' 4 vols (J. Byrne, Ed). Oxford: Elsevier. pp. 227–242.
*
David Marr (1981) ''Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
*
Gualtiero Piccinini
Gualtiero Piccinini (born 1970) is an Italian–American philosopher known for his work on the nature of mind and computation as well as on how to integrate psychology and neuroscience. He is Curators' Distinguished Professor in the Philosophy De ...
(2015). ''Physical Computation: A Mechanistic Account''. NY, Oxford University Press.
*
Gualtiero Piccinini
Gualtiero Piccinini (born 1970) is an Italian–American philosopher known for his work on the nature of mind and computation as well as on how to integrate psychology and neuroscience. He is Curators' Distinguished Professor in the Philosophy De ...
(2017) "Computation in Physical Systems", ''The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy'' (Summer 2017 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <
https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2017/entries/computation-physicalsystems/>.
*
*
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions ...
(1979) ''Mathematics, Matter, and Method: Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
*
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions ...
(1991) ''Representation and Reality.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
*
Hilary Putnam
Hilary Whitehall Putnam (; July 31, 1926 – March 13, 2016) was an American philosopher, mathematician, and computer scientist, and a major figure in analytic philosophy in the second half of the 20th century. He made significant contributions ...
(1995) ''Renewing Philosophy.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
*
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modu ...
(1975) ''The Language of Thought.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: The
MIT Press
The MIT Press is a university press affiliated with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts (United States). It was established in 1962.
History
The MIT Press traces its origins back to 1926 when MIT publish ...
.
*
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modu ...
(1995) ''The Elm and the Expert: Mentalese and Its Semantics.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
*
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modu ...
(1998) ''Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong.'' Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
*
Jerry Fodor
Jerry Alan Fodor (; April 22, 1935 – November 29, 2017) was an American philosopher and the author of many crucial works in the fields of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. His writings in these fields laid the groundwork for the modu ...
(2010) ''LOT2: The Language of Thought Revisited.'' Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
*
John Searle
John Rogers Searle (; born July 31, 1932) is an American philosopher widely noted for contributions to the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and social philosophy. He began teaching at UC Berkeley in 1959, and was Willis S. and Mario ...
(1992) ''The Rediscovery of the Mind.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
*
Matthias Scheutz Matthias is a name derived from the Greek Ματθαίος, in origin similar to Matthew.
People
Notable people named Matthias include the following:
In religion:
* Saint Matthias, chosen as an apostle in Acts 1:21–26 to replace Judas Iscariot
* ...
, ed. (2003) ''Computationalism: New Directions.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
*
Ned Block
Ned Joel Block (born 1942) is an American philosopher working in philosophy of mind who has made important contributions to the understanding of consciousness and the philosophy of cognitive science. He has been professor of philosophy and psych ...
, ed. (1983). ''Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, Volume 1.'' Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
*
Shimon Edelman Shimon ( he, שמעון) is the original Hebrew pronunciation of the names Simon and Simeon. Among individuals, Shimon can refer to:
Given names
* Shimon Agranat (1906-1992), Israeli judge and President of the Israeli Supreme Court
* Shimon Amsale ...
(2008
''Computing the Mind: How the Mind Really Works''
*
Steven Pinker
Steven Arthur Pinker (born September 18, 1954) is a Canadian-American cognitive psychologist, psycholinguist, popular science author, and public intellectual. He is an advocate of evolutionary psychology and the computational theory of mind.
P ...
(1997
''How the Mind Works''
*
Tim Crane
Timothy Martin Crane (born 17 October 1962) is a British philosopher specialising in the philosophy of mind, philosophy of perception, philosophy of psychology and metaphysics. His contributions to philosophy include a defence of a non-physical ...
(2003). ''The Mechanical Mind: A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Machines, and Mental Representation.'' New York, NY: Routledge.
*
Zenon Pylyshyn
Zenon Walter Pylyshyn (; 25 August 1937–6 December 2022) was a Canadian cognitive scientist and philosopher. He was a Canada Council Senior Fellow from 1963 to 1964.
Pylyshyn's research generally involved the theoretical analysis of the nat ...
(1984
''Computation and Cognition.''Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press.
External links
by
David Chalmers
David John Chalmers (; born 20 April 1966) is an Australian philosopher and cognitive scientist specializing in the areas of philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. He is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York Universi ...
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Bruno Marchalargues that physical
supervenience
In philosophy, supervenience refers to a relation between sets of properties or sets of facts. X is said to supervene on Y if and only if some difference in Y is necessary for any difference in X to be possible. Some examples include:
* Whether t ...
is not compatible with computational theory (French)
Collection of links to online papersComputationalism: The Very Idea an overview of computationalism by David Davenport.
The Cognitive Process Consciousness model of the Mind*
{{Evolutionary psychology
Theory of mind
Cognitive science
Philosophy of artificial intelligence
Cognitive psychology
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