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.

"The Analysis of Matter" is one of the earliest and best philosophical studies of the new physics of relativity and quantum mechanics.

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)

It is not widely realised that Turing was probably the first person to consider building computing machines out of simple, neuron-like elements connected together into networks in a largely random manner. Turing called his networks 'unorganised machines'. By the application of what he described as 'appropriate interference, mimicking education' an unorganised machine can be trained to perform any task that a Turing machine can carry out, provided the number of 'neurons' is sufficient. Turing proposed simulating both the behaviour of the (...) network and the training process by means of a computer program. We outline Turing's connectionist project of 1948. (shrink)

Presupposing no familiarity with the technical concepts of either philosophy or computing, this clear introduction reviews the progress made in AI since the inception of the field in 1956. Copeland goes on to analyze what those working in AI must achieve before they can claim to have built a thinking machine and appraises their prospects of succeeding.There are clear introductions to connectionism and to the language of thought hypothesis which weave together material from philosophy, artificial intelligence and neuroscience. John Searle's (...) attacks on AI and cognitive science are countered and close attention is given to foundational issues, including the nature of computation, Turing Machines, the Church-Turing Thesis and the difference between classical symbol processing and parallel distributed processing. The book also explores the possibility of machines having free will and consciousness and concludes with a discussion of in what sense the human brain may be a computer. (shrink)

Cognitive science uses the notion of computational information processing to explain cognitive information processing. Some philosophers have argued that anything can be described as doing computational information processing; if so, it is a vacuous notion for explanatory purposes.An attempt is made to explicate the notions of cognitive information processing and computational information processing and to specify the relationship between them. It is demonstrated that the resulting notion of computational information processing can only be realized in a restrictive class of dynamical (...) systems called physical notational systems (after Goodman's theory of notationality), and that the systems generally appealed to by cognitive science-physical symbol systems-are indeed such systems. Furthermore, it turns out that other alternative conceptions of computational information processing, Fodor's (1975) Language of Thought and Cummins' (1989) Interpretational Semantics appeal to substantially the same restrictive class of systems. (shrink)

Searle has recently used two adaptations of his Chinese room argument in an attack on connectionism. I show that these new forms of the argument are fallacious. First I give an exposition of and rebuttal to the original Chinese room argument, and then a brief introduction to the essentials of connectionism.

Looks at accounts by Locke, Fodor, Dretske, and Millikan concerning the nature of mental representation, and discusses connectionism and representation.

In this book, William Lycan reviews the diverse philosophical views on consciousness--including those of Kripke, Block, Campbell, Sellars, and Casteneda--and ..

Logic and Reality is a collection of essays by philosophers, logicians, mathematicians, and computer scientists, celebrating the work of the late distinguished philosopher Arthur Prior on the eightieth anniversary of his birth. Topics range from philosophical discussions of the nature of time and of the nature of logic itself, to descriptions of computer systems that can reason and take account of the fact that they exist in a temporal world.

The Analysis of Matter is perhaps best known for marking Russell's rejection of phenomenalism and his development of a variety of Lockean representationalism–-Russell's causal theory of perception. This occupies Part 2 of the work. Part 1, which is certainly less well known, contains many observations on twentieth-century physics. Unfortunately, Russell's discussion of relativity and the foundations of physical geometry is carried out in apparent ignorance of Reichenbach's and Carnap's investigations in the same period. The issue of conventionalism in its then (...) contemporary form is simply not discussed. The only writers of the period who appear to have had any influence on Russell's conception of the philosophical issues raised by relativity were Whitehead and Eddington. Even the work of A. A. Robb fails to receive any extended discussion;1 although Robb's causal theory is certainly relevant to many of Russell's concerns, especially those voiced in Part 3, regarding the construction of points and the topology of space-time. In the case of quantum mechanics, the idiosyncrasy of Russell's selection of topics is more understandable, since the Heisenberg and Schrödinger theories were only just discovered. Nevertheless, it seems bizarre to a contemporary reader that Russell should have given such emphasis2 to G. N. Lewis's suggestion that an atom emits light only when there is another atom to receive it–-a suggestion reminiscent of Leibniz, and one to which Russell frequently returns. In short, the philosophical problems of modern physics with which Russell deals seem remote from the perspective of post-positivist philosophy of physics. (shrink)

There are different ways to present a Presidential Address to the APA; the one I have chosen is simply to report on work that I am doing right now, on work in progress. I am going to present some of my further explorations into the computational model of the mind.\**.

"A third of the papers in this volume originated at the 1987 Spindel Conference ... at Memphis State University"--Pref.

This book is not a conventional introduction to the philosophy of mind, nor is it a contribution to the physicalist/ dualist debate. Instead The Representational Theory of Mind demonstrates that we can construct physicalist theories of important aspects of our mental life. Its aim is to explain and defend a physicalist theory of intelligence in two parts: the first six chapters consist of an exposition, elaboration and defence of human sentience (the functionalist theory of mind), and the second part considers (...) rivals and objections to this theory. Kim Sterelny aims to introduce people to this area of philosophy by exemplifying it, to show that philosophical and empirical investigations can be synthesized to the benefit of both. --From publisher's description. (shrink)

A history of the logic of action is outlined, beginning with St Anselm. Five modern authors are discussed in some detail: von Wright, Fitch, Kanger, Chellas and Pratt.

B. J. Copeland; Discussions: Vagueness and Bivalence: A Discussion of Williamson and Simons, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 95, Issue 1, 1 June.