Computer simulation of human thinking: An inquiry into its possibility and implications

College

College of Liberal Arts

Department/Unit

Philosophy

Document Type

Article

Source Title

Philosophia

Volume

40

Issue

1

First Page

76

Last Page

87

Publication Date

1-1-2011

Abstract

Critical in the computationalist account of the mind is the phenomenon called computational or computer simulation of human thinking, which is used to establish the theses that human thinking is a computational process and that computing machines are thinking systems. Accordingly, if human thinking can be simulated computationally then human thinking is a computational process; and if human thinking is a computational process then its computational simulation is itself a thinking process. This paper shows that the said phenomenon-the computational simulation of human thinking-is ill-conceived, and that, as a consequence, the theses that it intends to establish are problematic. It is argued that what is simulated computationally is not human thinking as such but merely its behavioral manifestations; and that a computational simulation of these behavioral manifestations does not necessarily establish that human thinking is computational, as it is logically possible for a non-computational system to exhibit behaviors that lend themselves to a computational simulation.

html

Disciplines

Artificial Intelligence and Robotics | Cognition and Perception

Keywords

Thought and thinking; Artificial intelligence

Upload File

wf_no

This document is currently not available here.

Share

COinS