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This chapter addresses influential computational models of the mind. In the first section, we look at the physical symbol system hypothesis proposed by Herbert Simon and Allen Newell. The hypothesis suggests that thinking is a process of manipulating symbol structures according to well-defined rules. Next, we introduce Jerry Fodor's language of thought hypothesis which proposes that thinking has a language-like grammatical structure. We explain why the language of thought hypothesis is a concrete practice of the physical symbol system hypothesis in the human cognitive system. The last section explores an argument against the physical symbol theory developed by John Searle. His Russian (Chinese) room argument is intended to refute the claim that manipulating symbols is sufficient for intelligence.
Fodor's discussion focused largely on human linguistic competence. This confounded the discussion with issues about the systematicity of natural language, which provides a special medium for peculiarly human thought. This chapter proposes control for this confound by considering the recent literature on honeybee navigation. After a brief discussion of some background issues, it summarizes some of the substantial research on honeybees' remarkable abilities to navigate and to convey information about various resources to other bees by means of their "waggle dance". The chapter argues that an examination of those abilities reveals that the processes underlying them are systematic, that this systematicity is best explained by presuming that honeybees implement some sort of classical language of thought, and that this explanation needs to be understood realistically. It concludes that bees really do have the intentional states that researchers routinely ascribe to them.
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