Scientific behavior is used as a benchmark to examine the truth status of computationalism (COMP) as a law of nature. A COMP-based artificial scientist is examined from three simple perspectives to see if they shed light on the truth or falsehood of COMP through its ability or otherwise, to deliver authentic original science on the a priori unknown like humans do. The first perspective (A) looks at the handling of ignorance and supports a claim that COMP is "trivially true" or (...) "pragmatically false" in the sense that you can simulate a scientist if you already know everything, which is a state that renders the simulation possible but pointless. The second scenario (B) is more conclusive and unusual in that it reveals that the COMP scientist can never propose/debate that COMP is a law of nature. This marked difference between the human and the artificial scientist in this single, very specific circumstance, means that COMP cannot be true as a general claim. The third scenario (C) examines the artificial scientist's ability to do science on itself/humans to uncover the "law of nature" which results in itself. This scenario reveals that a successful test for scientific behavior by a COMP-based artificial scientist supports a claim that COMP is true. Such a test is quite practical and can be applied to an artificial scientist based on any design principle, not merely COMP. Scenario (C) also reveals a practical example of the COMP scientist's inability to handle informal systems (in the form of liars), which further undermines COMP. Overall, the result is that COMP is false, with certainty in one very specific, critical place. This lends support to the claims (i) that artificial general intelligence will not succeed based on COMP principles, and (ii) computationally enacted abstract models of human cognition will never create a mind. (shrink)

A response to a recent critique by Cem Bozşahin of the theory of syntactic semantics as it applies to Helen Keller, and some applications of the theory to the philosophy of computer science.

A comprehensive introduction to the Language of Though Hypothesis (LOTH) accessible to general audiences. LOTH is an empirical thesis about thought and thinking. For their explication, it postulates a physically realized system of representations that have a combinatorial syntax (and semantics) such that operations on representations are causally sensitive only to the syntactic properties of representations. According to LOTH, thought is, roughly, the tokening of a representation that has a syntactic (constituent) structure with an appropriate semantics. Thinking thus consists in (...) syntactic operations defined over representations. Most of the arguments for LOTH derive their strength from their ability to explain certain empirical phenomena like productivity, systematicity of thought and thinking. (shrink)

What is the class of possible semiotic systems? What kinds of systems could count as such systems? The human mind is naturally considered the prototypical semiotic system. During years of research in semiotics the class has been broadened to include i.e. living systems like animals, or even plants. It is suggested in the literature on artificial intelligence that artificial agents are typical examples of symbol-processing entities. It also seems that semiotic processes are in fact cognitive processes. In consequence, it is (...) natural to ask the question about the relation between semiotic studies and research on artificial cognitive systems within cognitive science. Consequently, my main question concerns the problem of inclusion or exclusion from the semiotic spectrum at least some artificial systems. I would like to consider some arguments against the possibility of artificial semiotic systems and I will try to repeal them. Then I will present an existing natural-language using agent of the SNePS system and interpret it in terms of Peircean theory of signs. I would like also to show that some properties of semiotic systems in Peircean sense could be also found in a discussed artificial system. Finally, I will have some remarks on the status of semiotics in general. (shrink)

Turing's celebrated 1950 paper proposes a very general methodological criterion for modelling mental function: total functional equivalence and indistinguishability. His criterion gives rise to a hierarchy of Turing Tests, from subtotal ("toy") fragments of our functions (t1), to total symbolic (pen-pal) function (T2 -- the standard Turing Test), to total external sensorimotor (robotic) function (T3), to total internal microfunction (T4), to total indistinguishability in every empirically discernible respect (T5). This is a "reverse-engineering" hierarchy of (decreasing) empirical underdetermination of the theory (...) by the data. Level t1 is clearly too underdetermined, T2 is vulnerable to a counterexample (Searle's Chinese Room Argument), and T4 and T5 are arbitrarily overdetermined. Hence T3 is the appropriate target level for cognitive science. When it is reached, however, there will still remain more unanswerable questions than when Physics reaches its Grand Unified Theory of Everything (GUTE), because of the mind/body problem and the other-minds problem, both of which are inherent in this empirical domain, even though Turing hardly mentions them. (shrink)

In a friendly interdisciplinary debate, we interrogate from several vantage points the question of “personhood” in light of contemporary and near-future forms of social AI. David J. Gunkel approaches the matter from a philosophical and legal standpoint, while Jordan Wales offers reflections theological and psychological. Attending to metaphysical, moral, social, and legal understandings of personhood, we ask about the position of apparently personal artificial intelligences in our society and individual lives. Re-examining the “person” and questioning prominent construals of that category, (...) we hope to open new views upon urgent and much-discussed questions that, quite soon, may confront us in our daily lives. (shrink)

The present dissertation concerns cognitive psychology—theories about the nature and mechanism of perception and thought—during the High Middle Ages (1250–1350). Many of the issues at the heart of philosophy of mind today—intentionality, mental representation, the active/passive nature of perception—were also the subject of intense investigation during this period. I provide an analysis of these debates with a special focus on Durand of St.-Pourçain, a contemporary of John Duns Scotus and William of Ockham. Durand was widely recognized as a leading philosopher (...) until the advent of the early modern period, yet his views have been largely neglected in the last century. The aim of my dissertation, then, is to provide a new understanding of Durand’s cognitive psychology and to establish a better picture of developments in cognitive psychology during the period. -/- Most philosophers in the High Middle Ages held, in one form or another, the thesis that most forms of cognition (thought, perception) involve the reception of the form of the object into the mind. Such forms in the mind explain what a given episode of cognition is about, its content. According to what has been called the conformality theory of content, the content of our mental states is fixed by this form in the mind. Durand rejects this thesis, and one of the primary theses that I pursue is that Durand replaces the conformality theory of content with a causal theory of content, according to which the content of our mental states is fixed by its cause. When I think about Felix and not Graycat, this is to be explained not by the fact that I have in my mind the form of Felix and not Graycat, but rather by the fact that Felix and not Graycat caused my thought. -/- This is both a controversial interpretation and, indeed, a controversial theory. It is a controversial interpretation because Durand seems to reject the thesis that objects are the causes of our mental states. In the first half of the present dissertation, I argue that Durand does not reject this thesis but he rejects another nearby thesis: that objects as causes give to us ‘forms’. On Durand’s view, an object causes a mental state even though it does not give to us a new ‘form’. In the second half of the dissertation I defend Durand’s causal theory of content against salient objections to it. (shrink)