Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-tf8b9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T22:30:53.833Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Resilience of Computationalism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Gualtiero Piccinini
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Computationalism—the view that cognition is computation—has always been controversial. It faces two types of objection. According to insufficiency objections, computation is insufficient for some cognitive phenomenon X. According to objections from neural realization, cognitive processes are realized by neural processes, but neural processes have feature Y, and having Y is incompatible with being (or realizing) computations. In this article, I explain why computationalism has survived these objections. To adjudicate the dispute between computationalism and its foes, I will conclude that we need a better account of computation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 77 , Issue 5 , December 2010 , pp. 852 - 861
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

‡

This article benefited from comments by Anibal Astobiza, Carl Craver, Tony Dardis, Mark Sprevak, and an anonymous referee and from research support from the University of Missouri Research Board. Thanks also to my audience at the 2008 PSA meeting. Thanks to James Virtel for editorial assistance.

References

Block, Ned. 1978. “Troubles with Functionalism.” In Perception and Cognition: Issues in the Foundations of Psychology, ed. Savage, C. Wade, 261–325. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Dennett, Daniel C. 1988. “Quining Qualia.” In Consciousness in Contemporary Science, ed. Marcel, Anthony J. and Bisiach, Edoardo, 42–77. Oxford: Clarendon.Google Scholar
Dreyfus, Hubert L. 1979. What Computers Can't Do. New York: Harper & Row.Google Scholar
Feferman, Solomon. 1995. “Penrose's Gödelian Argument.” Psyche 2:21–32.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry A. 2000. The Mind Doesn't Work That Way. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gerard, Ralph W. 1951. “Some of the Problems Concerning Digital Notions in the Central Nervous System.” In Cybernetics: Circular Causal and Feedback Mechanisms in Biological and Social Systems; Transactions of the Seventh Conference, March 23–24, 1950, ed. Foerster, Heinz Von, Mead, Margaret, and Teuber, Hans Lukas, 11–57. New York: Macy Foundation.Google Scholar
Globus, Gordon G. 1992. “Towards a Noncomputational Cognitive Neuroscience.” Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience 4:299–310.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lucas, John Randolph. 1961. “Minds, Machines, and Gödel.” Philosophy 36:112–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lycan, William. 1987. Consciousness. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
McCulloch, Warren S., and Pitts, Walter. 1943. “A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity.” Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics 7:115–33.Google Scholar
Newell, Allen. 1990. Unified Theories of Cognition. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Penrose, Roger. 1994. Shadows of the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Perkel, Donald H. 1990. “Computational Neuroscience: Scope and Structure.” In Computational Neuroscience, ed. Schwartz, Eric L., 38–45. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Piccinini, Gualtiero. 2007a. “Computational Modeling vs. Computational Explanation: Is Everything a Turing Machine, and Does It Matter to the Philosophy of Mind?” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 85:93–115.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piccinini, Gualtiero. 2007b. “Computing Mechanisms.” Philosophy of Science 74:501–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piccinini, Gualtiero. 2008a. “Computers.” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 89:32–73.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piccinini, Gualtiero. 2008b. “Some Neural Networks Compute, Others Don't.” Neural Networks 21:311–21.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piccinini, Gualtiero. 2009. “Computationalism in the Philosophy of Mind.” Philosophy Compass 4:1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Piccinini, Gualtiero. Forthcoming. “The Mind as Neural Software? Understanding Functionalism, Computationalism, and Computational Functionalism.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.Google Scholar
Pour-El, Marian B. 1974. “Abstract Computability and Its Relation to the General Purpose Analog Computer: Some Connections between Logic, Differential Equations and Analog Computers.” Transactions of the American Mathematical Society 199:1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pylyshyn, Zenon W. 1984. Computation and Cognition. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Rubel, Lee A. 1985. “The Brain as an Analog Computer.” Journal of Theoretical Neurobiology 4:73–81.Google Scholar
Searle, John R. 1980. “Minds, Brains, and Programs.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 3:417–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Thompson, Evan. 2007. Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
van Gelder, Tim. 1998. “The Dynamical Hypothesis in Cognitive Science.” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 21:615–65.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Vera, Alonso H., and Simon, Herbert A.. 1993. “Situated Action: A Symbolic Interpretation.” Cognitive Science 17:7–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weiskopf, Daniel. 2004. “The Place of Time in Cognition.” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 55:87–105.CrossRefGoogle Scholar