Computers and Cognition: Why Minds are not Machines

✍ Scribed by James H. Fetzer (auth.)

• Publisher: Springer Netherlands
• Year: 2001
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 333
• Series: Studies in Cognitive Systems 25
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

An important collection of studies providing a fresh and original perspective on the nature of mind, including thoughtful and detailed arguments that explain why the prevailing paradigm - the computational conception of language and mentality - can no longer be sustained. An alternative approach is advanced, inspired by the work of Charles S. Peirce, according to which minds are sign-using (or `semiotic') systems, which in turn generates distinctions between different kinds of minds and overcomes problems that burden more familiar alternatives. Unlike conceptions of minds as machines, this novel approach has obvious evolutionary implications, where differences in semiotic abilities tend to distinguish the species. From this point of view, the scope and limits of computer and AI systems can be more adequately appraised and alternative accounts of consciousness and cognition can be more thoroughly criticised.
Readership: Intermediate and advanced students of computer science, AI, cognitive science, and all students of the philosophy of the mind.

✦ Table of Contents

Front Matter....Pages i-xxi
Front Matter....Pages 1-1
Minds and Machines....Pages 3-21
Front Matter....Pages 23-23
Primitive Concepts....Pages 25-42
Signs and Minds....Pages 43-71
Language and Mentality....Pages 73-98
Front Matter....Pages 99-99
Mental Algorithms....Pages 101-129
What Makes Connectionism Different?....Pages 131-152
People are not Computers....Pages 153-180
Front Matter....Pages 181-181
Program Verification: The Very Idea....Pages 183-220
Philosophical Aspects of Program Verification....Pages 221-245
Philosophy and Computer Science....Pages 247-267
Front Matter....Pages 269-269
Computer Reliability and Public Policy: Limits of Knowledge of Computer-Based Systems....Pages 271-308
Back Matter....Pages 309-326

✦ Subjects

Interdisciplinary Studies; Artificial Intelligence (incl. Robotics); Philosophy of Mind; Philosophy of Science