The paper presents a paradoxical feature of computational systems that suggests that computationalism cannot explain symbol grounding. If the mind is a digital computer, as computationalism claims, then it can be computing either over meaningful symbols or over meaningless symbols. If it is computing over meaningful symbols its functioning presupposes the existence of meaningful symbols in the system, i.e. it implies semantic nativism. If the mind is computing over meaningless symbols, no intentional cognitive processes are available prior to symbol grounding. (...) In this case, no symbol grounding could take place since any grounding presupposes intentional cognitive processes. So, whether computing in the mind is over meaningless or over meaningful symbols, computationalism implies semantic nativism. (shrink)

William Rapaport, in “How Helen Keller used syntactic semantics to escape from a Chinese Room,” (Rapaport 2006), argues that Helen Keller was in a sort of Chinese Room, and that her subsequent development of natural language fluency illustrates the flaws in Searle’s famous Chinese Room Argument and provides a method for developing computers that have genuine semantics (and intentionality). I contend that his argument fails. In setting the problem, Rapaport uses his own preferred definitions of semantics and syntax, but he (...) does not translate Searle’s Chinese Room argument into that idiom before attacking it. Once the Chinese Room is translated into Rapaport’s idiom (in a manner that preserves the distinction between meaningful representations and uninterpreted symbols), I demonstrate how Rapaport’s argument fails to defeat the CRA. This failure brings a crucial element of the Chinese Room Argument to the fore: the person in the Chinese Room is prevented from connecting the Chinese symbols to his/her own meaningful experiences and memories. This issue must be addressed before any victory over the CRA is announced. (shrink)

In addition to his famous Chinese Room argument, John Searle has posed a more radical problem for views on which minds can be understood as programs. Even his wall, he claims, implements the WordStar program according to the standard definition of implementation because there is some ‘‘pattern of molecule movements’’ that is isomorphic to the formal structure of WordStar. Program implementation, Searle charges, is merely observer-relative and thus not an intrinsic feature of the world. I argue, first, that analogous charges (...) involving other concepts (motion and meaning) lead to consequences no one accepts. Second, I show that Searle’s treatment of computation is incoherent, yielding the consequence that nothing computes anything: even our standard personal computers fail to run any programs on this account. I propose an alternative account, one that accords with the way engineers, programmers, and cognitive scientists use the concept of computation in their empirical work. This alternative interpretation provides the basis of a philosophical analysis of program implementation, one that may yet be suitable for a computational theory of the mind. (shrink)

Ita La recensione presenta la prospettiva enattivista difesa da Alva Noë, e ne discute alcuni aspetti specifici. Il pensiero, la coscienza e la cognizione non sono pienamente comprensibili, secondo l’enattivismo di Noë, senza un’adeguata considerazione del ruolo ricoperto dal corpo e dall’ambiente. Sarebbe quindi sbagliato continuare a pensare che il cervello da solo sia responsabile dei processi cognitivi umani: il programma che ricerca i correlati neurali della coscienza sarebbe quindi destinato al fallimento dal principio, perché tralascia in partenza corpo e (...) ambiente; i programmi di ricerca nel campo dell’intelligenza artificiale sarebbero ugualmente compromessi, non solo con una concezione computazionalista della cognizione, ma anche con la vecchia idea che un cervello artificiale sia sufficiente alla cognizione quanto un cervello naturale. Di seguito si prendono in esame due prospettive sperimentali su cui Noë fa grande affidamento: gli studi sulla plasticità neurale dei furetti svolti da Mriganka Sur e altri, e la realizzazione di un sistema di sostituzione visuo-tattile da parte di Paul Bach-Y-Rita. Per Noë si tratta di elementi cruciali in supporto alla propria prospettiva: in realtà, come emerge dalla breve analisi, l’attribuire loro un significato così chiaro e univoco pro-enattivismo è qualcosa di molto meno scontato. Infine, segue un breve bilancio del libro di Noë, dove gli elementi d’interesse del volume sono presentati insieme all’individuazione di alcuni punti deboli, che il testo condivide con la gran parte degli studi che in vario modo fanno leva sull’intuizione legata all’embodiement: da un lato una difficoltà strutturale riguarda la possibilità di identificare con chiarezza gli elementi costitutivi del mentale; dall’altro lato, il riferimento a forme di esternalismo radicale sembra ugualmente comportare diversi problemi. -/- Abstract Eng The review presents Alva Noë’s enactivist view, and aims at discussing some of its ideas. Thought, consciousness, and cognition are not understandable, Noë claims, without taking into proper consideration the role played by the body and the environment. It would be wrong indeed to go on thinking that our brain alone is responsible for human cognitive processes: the program searching for the neural correlates of consciousness is hopeless in principle, because it neglects from the beginning the body and the environment; research programs in artificial intelligence are as well compromised, not only with a computationalist view of cognition, but also with the old idea that an artificial brain will suffice for cognition just like a natural one. Thereafter, two experimental perspectives, that Noë uses to support his view, are examined: Mriganka Sur’s studies on neural plasticity of ferrets, and Paul Bach-Y-Rita’s tactile-visual substitution system. Noë argues that these results are crucial in supporting his view, but, as the discussion highlights, their pro-enactivism meaning is not so clear and unambiguous. Finally, a balance of the book follows, where the many elements of interest are presented together with the acknowledgment of some weak points, that the book shares with the majority of the proposals that deal with the embodiment’s insight: on the one hand, a structural difficulty concerns the possibility to identify clearly the constitutive elements of the mental; on the other hand, the reference to radical versions of externalism seems to entail many difficulties as well. (shrink)

Disertační práce se zabývá problematikou připisování myšlení jiným entitám, a to pomocí imitační hry navržené v roce 1950 britským filosofem Alanem Turingem. Jeho kritérium, známé v dějinách filosofie jako Turingův test, je podrobeno detailní analýze. Práce popisuje nejen původní námitky samotného Turinga, ale především pozdější diskuse v druhé polovině 20. století. Největší pozornost je věnována těmto kritikám: Lucasova matematická námitka využívající Gödelovu větu o neúplnosti, Searlův argument čínského pokoje konstatující nedostatečnost syntaxe pro sémantiku, Blockův návrh na použití brutální síly pro (...) řešení imitační hry, Frenchova teorie subkognitivních informací a Michieho skepticismus ohledně možnosti umělého vědomí. Závěr práce zachycuje současný stav recepce Turingova testu a představuje pokusy o jeho praktickou realizaci, například v každoroční soutěži o Loebnerovu cenu. Autor práce zastává názor, že ani po více než šedesáti letech od uveřejnění Turingova paradigmatického eseje stále neexistují žádné vážné důvody pro zamítnutí jeho tvrzení. Tradiční komputační funkcionalismus možná není ideální teorií vysvětlující činnost myslí a jako slibnější se může jevit vývoj v neurálních vědách, ale Turingův test je přesto užitečným a snad i jediným nástrojem pro detekci inteligence u lidmi vytvořených strojů. (shrink)

The journal of Cognitive Computation is defined in part by the notion that biologically inspired computational accounts are at the heart of cognitive processes in both natural and artificial systems. Many studies of various important aspects of cognition (memory, observational learning, decision making, reward prediction learning, attention control, etc.) have been made by modelling the various experimental results using ever-more sophisticated computer programs. In this manner progressive inroads have been made into gaining a better understanding of the many components of (...) cognition. Concomitantly in both science and science fiction the hope is periodically re-ignited that a manmade system can be engineered to be fully cognitive and conscious purely in virtue of its execution of an appropriate computer program. However, whilst the usefulness of the computational metaphor in many areas of psychology and neuroscience is clear, it has not gone unchallenged and in this article I will review a group of philosophical arguments that suggest either such unequivocal optimism in computationalism is misplaced—computation is neither necessary nor sufficient for cognition—or panpsychism (the belief that the physical universe is fundamentally composed of elements each of which is conscious) is true. I conclude by highlighting an alternative metaphor for cognitive processes based on communication and interaction. (shrink)