Little, Brown, 1992 Review by Glenn Branch on Jul 5th 1999 Volume: 3, Number: 27.

This collection of 17 essays by the author offers a comprehensive theory of mind, encompassing traditional issues of consciousness and free will.

The dominant scientific and philosophical view of the mind – according to which, put starkly, cognition is computation – is refuted herein, via specification and defense of the following new argument: Computation is reversible; cognition isn't; ergo, cognition isn't computation. After presenting a sustained dialectic arising from this defense, we conclude with a brief preview of the view we would put in place of the cognition-is-computation doctrine.

Consciousness is a mongrel concept: there are a number of very different "consciousnesses." Phenomenal consciousness is experience; the phenomenally conscious aspect of a state is what it is like to be in that state. The mark of access-consciousness, by contrast, is availability for use in reasoning and rationally guiding speech and action. These concepts are often partly or totally conflated, with bad results. This target article uses as an example a form of reasoning about a function of "consciousness" based on (...) the phenomenon of blindsight. Some information about stimuli in the blind field is represented in the brains of blindsight patients, as shown by their correct "guesses," but they cannot harness this information in the service of action, and this is said to show that a function of phenomenal consciousness is somehow to enable information represented in the brain to guide action. But stimuli in the blind field are BOTH access-unconscious and phenomenally unconscious. The fallacy is: an obvious function of the machinery of access-consciousness is illicitly transferred to phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

What psychological and philosophical significance should we attach to recent efforts at computer simulations of human cognitive capacities? In answering this question, I find it useful to distinguish what I will call "strong" AI from "weak" or "cautious" AI. According to weak AI, the principal value of the computer in the study of the mind is that it gives us a very powerful tool. For example, it enables us to formulate and test hypotheses in a more rigorous and precise fashion. (...) But according to strong AI, the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind; rather, the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind, in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 3e offers the most comprehensive, up-to-date introduction to the theory and practice of artificial intelligence. Number one in its field, this textbook is ideal for one or two-semester, undergraduate or graduate-level courses in Artificial Intelligence. Dr. Peter Norvig, contributing Artificial Intelligence author and Professor Sebastian Thrun, a Pearson author are offering a free online course at Stanford University on artificial intelligence. According to an article in The New York Times, the course on artificial intelligence is (...) “one of three being offered experimentally by the Stanford computer science department to extend technology knowledge and skills beyond this elite campus to the entire world.” One of the other two courses, an introduction to database software, is being taught by Pearson author Dr. Jennifer Widom. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, 3e is available to purchase as an eText for your Kindle™, NOOK™, and the iPhone®/iPad®. (shrink)

Semantic Engines: An Introduction to Mind Design, John C. Haugeland; Computer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search, Alan Newell and Herbert A. Simon; Complexity and the Study of Artificial and Human Intelligence, Zenon Pylyshyn; A Framework for Representing Knowledge, Marvin Minsky; Artificial Intelligence---A Personal View, David Marr; Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity, Drew McDermott; From Micro-Worlds to Knowledge Representation: AI at an Impasse, Hubert L. Dreyfus; Reductionism and the Nature of Psychology, Hilary Putnam; Intentional Systems, Daniel C. Dennett; The (...) Nature and Plausibility of Cognitivism, John C. Haugeland; Minds, Brains, and Programs, John R. Searle; MethodologicalSolipsism Considered as a Research Strategy in Cognitive Psychology, Jerry A. Fodor; The Material Mind, Donald Davidson. (shrink)

Cognitive science is, of course, not really a new discipline, but a recognition of a fundamental set of common concerns shared by the disciplines of psychology, computer science, linguistics, economics, epistemology, and the social sciences generally. All of these disciplines are concerned with information processing systems, and all of them are concerned with systems that are adaptive—that are what they are from being ground between the nether millstone of their physiology or hardware, as the case may be, and the upper (...) millstone of a complex environment in which they exist. Systems that are adaptive may equally well be described as “artificial,” for as environments change, they can be expected to change too, as though they were deliberately designed to fit those environments (as indeed they sometimes are).The task of empirical science is to discover and verify invariants in the phenomena under study. The artificiality of information processing systems creates a subtle problem in defining empirical invariants in such systems. For observed regularities are very likely invariant only within a limited range of variation in their environments, and any accurate statement of the laws of such systems must contain reference to their relativity to environmental features. It is a common experience in experimental psychology, for example, to discover that we are studying sociology—the effects of the past histories of our subjects—when we think we are studying physiology—the effects of properties of the human nervous system. Similarly, business cycle economists are only now becoming aware of the extent to which the parameters of the system they are studying are dependent on the experiences of a population with economic events over the previous generation.In artificial sciences, the descriptive and the normative are never far apart. Thus, in economics, the “principle of rationality” is sometimes asserted as a descriptive invariant, sometimes as advice to decision makers. Similarly, in psychology, the processes of adaptation (learning) have always been a central topic, at one time a topic that dominated the whole field of research. Linguistics, too, has suffered its confusions between descriptive and normative attitudes towards its subject. But we must avoid the error, in studying information processing systems, of thinking that the adaptive processes themselves must be invariant; and we must be prepared to face the complexities of regression in the possibility that they themselves may be subject to improvement and adaptation.It might have been necessary a decade ago to argue for the commonality of the information processes that are employed by such disparate systems as computers and human nervous systems. The evidence for that commonality is now overwhelming, and the remaining questions about the boundaries of cognitive science have more to do with whether there also exist nontrivial commonalities with information processing in genetic systems than with whether men and machines both think. (shrink)

The title of The Rediscovery of the Mind suggests the question "When was the mind lost?" Since most people may not be aware that it ever was lost, we must also then ask "Who lost it?" It was lost, of course, only by philosophers, by certain philosophers. This passed unnoticed by society at large. The "rediscovery" is also likely to pass unnoticed. But has the mind been rediscovered by the same philosophers who "lost" it? Probably not. John Searle is an (...) analytic philosopher, with some of the same notions as the positivists and behaviorists who rejected consciousness and "lost" the mind in the first place, but he also does not sound like the kind of reductionist who would have joined that crowd. His views, indeed, are sensible enough, and some of his insights so important, that it is a shame to find his thought profoundly limited by some of the same mistakes and prejudices that ruined philosophy, and not just philosophy of mind, under the influence of those positivists and behaviorists. There is enough of genuine value in his treatment, that it can easily be taken up and, with relatively slight modification, added to what is of permanent value in the history of philosophy. (shrink)

No mental phenomenon is more central than consciousness to an adequate understanding of the mind. Nor does any mental phenomenon seem more stubbornly to resist theoretical treatment. Consciousness is so basic to the way we think about the mind that it can be tempting to suppose that no mental states exist that are not conscious states. Indeed, it may even seem mysterious what sort of thing a mental state might be if it is not a conscious state. On this way (...) of looking at things, if any mental states do lack consciousness, they are exceptional cases that call for special explanation or qualification. Perhaps dispositional or cognitive states exist that are not conscious, but nonetheless count as mental states. (shrink)

Pollock describes an exciting theory of rationality and its partial implementation in OSCAR, a computer system whose descendants will literally be persons.

On the occasion of a first conference on Cognitive Science, it seems appropriate to review the basis of common understanding between the various disciplines. In my estimate, the most fundamental contribution so far of artificial intelligence and computer science to the joint enterprise of cognitive science has been the notion of a physical symbol system, i.e., the concept of a broad class of systems capable of having and manipulating symbols, yet realizable in the physical universe. The notion of symbol so (...) defined is internal to this concept, so it becomes a hypothesis that this notion of symbols includes the symbols that we humans use every day of our lives. In this paper we attempt systematically, but plainly, to lay out the nature of physical symbol systems. Such a review is in ways familiar, but not thereby useless. Restatement of fundamentals is an important exercise. (shrink)

Suppose lightning strikes a dead tree in a swamp; I am standing nearby. My body is reduced to its elements, while entirely by coincidence (and out of different molecules) the tree is turned into my physical replica. My replica, The Swampman.....moves into my house and seems to write articles on radical interpretation. No one can tell the difference.

The idea that human thought requires the execution of mental algorithms provides a foundation for research programs in cognitive science, which are largely based upon the computational conception of language and mentality. Consideration is given to recent work by Penrose, Searle, and Cleland, who supply various grounds for disputing computationalism. These grounds in turn qualify as reasons for preferring a non-computational, semiotic approach, which can account for them as predictable manifestations of a more adquate conception. Thinking does not ordinarily require (...) the execution of mental algorithms, which appears to be at best no more than one rather special kind of thinking. (shrink)

The idea that human thought requires the execution of mental algorithms provides a foundation for research programs in cognitive science, which are largely based upon the computational conception of language and mentality. Consideration is given to recent work by Penrose, Searle, and Cleland, who supply various grounds for disputing computationalism. These grounds in turn qualify as reasons for preferring a non-computational, semiotic approach, which can account for them as predictable manifestations of a more adquate conception. Thinking does not ordinarily require (...) the execution of mental algorithms, which appears to be at best no more than one rather special kind of thinking. (shrink)

This paper argues for a noncognitiveist computationalism in the philosophy of mind. It further argues that both humans and computers have intentionality, that is, their mental states are semantical -- they are about things in their worlds.

"A sequel to Pollock's How to Build a Person, this volume builds upon that theoretical groundwork for the implementation of rationality through artificial ...

The book is an extended study of the problem of consciousness. After setting up the problem, I argue that reductive explanation of consciousness is impossible , and that if one takes consciousness seriously, one has to go beyond a strict materialist framework. In the second half of the book, I move toward a positive theory of consciousness with fundamental laws linking the physical and the experiential in a systematic way. Finally, I use the ideas and arguments developed earlier to defend (...) a form of strong artificial intelligence and to analyze some problems in the foundations of quantum mechanics. (shrink)

Determinism is a perennial topic of philosophical discussion. Very little acquaintance with the philosophical literature is needed to reveal the Tower of ...

In this provocative book, Fred Dretske argues that to achieve an understanding of the mind it is not enough to understand the biological machinery by means of...

A textbook on modal logic, intended for readers already acquainted with the elements of formal logic, containing nearly 500 exercises. Brian F. Chellas provides a systematic introduction to the principal ideas and results in contemporary treatments of modality, including theorems on completeness and decidability. Illustrative chapters focus on deontic logic and conditionality. Modality is a rapidly expanding branch of logic, and familiarity with the subject is now regarded as a necessary part of every philosopher's technical equipment. Chellas here offers an (...) up-to-date and reliable guide essential for the student. (shrink)

This book argues that (1) AI will continue to produce machines with the capacity to pass stronger and stronger versions of the Turing Test but that (2) the "Person Building Project" (the attempt by AI and Cognitive Science to build a machine which is a person) will inevitably fail. The defense of (2) rests in large part on a refutation of the proposition that persons are automata -- a refutation involving an array of issues, from free will to Godel to (...) introspection to Searle and beyond. The defense of. (shrink)

Moody is right that the doctrine of conscious inessentialism is false. Unfortunately, his zombie-based argument against , once made sufficiently clear to evaluate, is revealed as nothing but legerdemain. The fact is -- though Moody has convinced himself otherwise -- certain zombies are impenetrable: that they are zombies, and not conscious beings like us, is something beyond the capacity of humans to divine.

A robot that is functionally indistinguishable from us may or may not be a mindless Zombie. There will never be any way to know, yet its functional principles will be as close as we can ever get to explaining the mind.

The functionalist view of the nature of the mind is now widely accepted. Like behaviorism and physicalism, functionalism seeks to answer the question "What are mental states?" I shall be concerned with identity thesis formulations of functionalism. They say, for example, that pain is a functional state, just as identity thesis formulations of physicalism say that pain is a physical state.

A Photcopy of Thinking Things Through, Princeton Univeresity Press, 1980.

Knock-down refutations are rare in philosophy, and unambiguous self-refutations are even rarer, for obvious reasons, but sometimes we get lucky. Sometimes philosophers clutch an insupportable hypothesis to their bosoms and run headlong over the cliff edge. Then, like cartoon characters, they hang there in mid-air, until they notice what they have done and gravity takes over. Just such a boon is the philosophers' concept of a zombie, a strangely attractive notion that sums up, in one leaden lump, almost everything that (...) I think is wrong with current thinking about consciousness. Philosophers ought to have dropped the zombie like a hot potato, but since they persist in their embrace, this gives me a golden opportunity to focus attention on the most seductive error in current thinking. (shrink)

Todd Moody’s Zombie Earth thought experiment is an attempt to show that ‘conscious inessentialism’ is false or in need of qualification. We defend conscious inessentialism against his criticisms, and argue that zombie thought experiments highlight the need to explain why consciousness evolved and what function(s) it serves. This is the hardest problem in consciousness studies.