Computation, among other things, is beneath us
Minds and Machines 4 (4):469-88 (1994)
Abstract
What''s computation? The received answer is that computation is a computer at work, and a computer at work is that which can be modelled as a Turing machine at work. Unfortunately, as John Searle has recently argued, and as others have agreed, the received answer appears to imply that AI and Cog Sci are a royal waste of time. The argument here is alarmingly simple: AI and Cog Sci (of the Strong sort, anyway) are committed to the view that cognition is computation (or brains are computers); butall processes are computations (orall physical things are computers); so AI and Cog Sci are positively silly.I refute this argument herein, in part by defining the locutions x is a computer and c is a computation in a way that blocks Searle''s argument but exploits the hard-to-deny link between What''s Computation? and the theory of computation. However, I also provide, at the end of this essay, an argument which, it seems to me, implies not that AI and Cog Sci are silly, but that they''re based on a form of computation that is well beneath human persons.Author's Profile
DOI
10.1007/bf00974171
My notes
Similar books and articles
Cognition is not computation: The argument from irreversibility.Selmer Bringsjord - 1997 - Synthese 113 (2):285-320.
In computation, parallel is nothing, physical everything.Selmer Bringsjord - 2001 - Minds and Machines 11 (1):95-99.
Analytics
Added to PP
2009-01-28
Downloads
98 (#128,079)
6 months
2 (#300,644)
2009-01-28
Downloads
98 (#128,079)
6 months
2 (#300,644)
Historical graph of downloads
Author's Profile
Citations of this work
Significance of Models of Computation, from Turing Model to Natural Computation.Gordana Dodig-Crnkovic - 2011 - Minds and Machines 21 (2):301-322.
Superminds: People Harness Hypercomputation, and More.Mark Phillips, Selmer Bringsjord & M. Zenzen - 2003 - Dordrecht, Netherland: Springer Verlag.
Cognition is not computation: The argument from irreversibility.Selmer Bringsjord - 1997 - Synthese 113 (2):285-320.
Computers Are Syntax All the Way Down: Reply to Bozşahin.William J. Rapaport - 2019 - Minds and Machines 29 (2):227-237.