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)

I would say that syntax is a significant, if shifty, index of a writer's perspective on his subject-matter. In this light, please consider the syntax of my title. It is two nouns connected by a logical term, ‘as’. On one version of the programme for this lecture series, the word ‘as’ is misprinted as ‘and’; this makes a big difference. A simple conjunction of two nouns, ‘Literature and Discourse’, would suggest that I accept the meanings of the two words as (...) stable, unanalysed. The connective ‘as’, however, is intended to announce that this juxtaposition of the two noun terms is an analysis of the two nouns, particularly the first – an examination of the nature of the first term in the light of the meaning of the second. (shrink)

Feminist analyses of the roles gender has played in art lead to an alternative theory that emphasizes art's complex interactions with culture(s) rather than the autonomy within culture claimed for it by formalism. Focusing on the visual arts, I extrapolate the new theory from feminist research and compare it with formalist precepts. Sharing Arthur Danto's concern that art has been disenfranchised in the twentieth century by its preoccupation with theory, I claim that feminist thought re-enfranchises art by revisioning its relationship (...) to its contexts. (shrink)

In their article ‘The Intentional Fallacy’, Beardsley and Wimsatt raised problems about the legitimacy of certain critical practices. These problems, raised again in later writings and intensively discussed in recent years, remain unsettled and this lecture is intended to throw light upon them.

For the last 40 years or so the is/ought gap, the fact/value distinction and the naturalistic fallacy have figured prominently in ethical debates. This longevity, however, has had an adverse side effect. So familiar have they become that they—and their respective rationales—have tended to become blurred. It is the purpose of this paper to explain why they should be kept distinct.

I would say that syntax is a significant, if shifty, index of a writer's perspective on his subject-matter. In this light, please consider the syntax of my title. It is two nouns connected by a logical term, ‘as’. On one version of the programme for this lecture series, the word ‘as’ is misprinted as ‘and’; this makes a big difference. A simple conjunction of two nouns, ‘Literature and Discourse’, would suggest that I accept the meanings of the two words as (...) stable, unanalysed. The connective ‘as’, however, is intended to announce that this juxtaposition of the two noun terms is an analysis of the two nouns, particularly the first – an examination of the nature of the first term in the light of the meaning of the second. (shrink)

In the end, even the creative achievements of Shakespeare and Bach must be eradicated by death and nothingness, when the earth is burnt up in the sun. But the temporality of human existence and meaning does not invalidate the quest for meaning-for even that future universe, as dead as it must be will have some meaning, in that it contains the artifacts, even in ashes, of the sometime existence of human life and consciousness. We HAVE BEEN. It was towards this (...) vision that Mahler strove. (shrink)