The Computational Theory of Mind (2015)

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Menu Browse Table of Contents What's New Random Entry Chronological Archives About Editorial Information About the SEP Editorial Board How to Cite the SEP Special Characters Advanced Tools Contact Support SEP Support the SEP PDFs for SEP Friends Make a Donation SEPIA for Libraries Entry Navigation Entry Contents Bibliography Academic Tools Friends PDF Preview Author and Citation Info Back to Top The Computational Theory of MindFirst published Fri Oct 16, 2015; substantive revision Wed Dec 18, 2024 Could a machine think? Could the mind itself be a thinking machine? The computer revolution transformed discussion of these questions, offering our best prospects yet for machines that emulate reasoning, decision-making, problem solving, perception, linguistic comprehension, and other mental processes. Advances in computing raise the prospect that the mind itself is a computational system—a position known as the computational theory of mind (CTM). Computationalists are researchers who endorse CTM, at least as applied to certain important mental processes. CTM played a central role within cognitive science during the 1960s and 1970s. For many years, it enjoyed orthodox status. More recently, it has come under pressure from various rival paradigms. A key task facing computationalists is to explain what one means when one says that the mind “computes”. A second task is to argue that the mind “computes” in the relevant sense. A third task is to elucidate how computational description relates to other common types of description, especially neurophysiological description (which cites neurophysiological properties of the organism’s brain or body) and intentional description (which cites representational properties of mental states). 1. Turing machines 2. Artificial intelligence 3. The classical computational theory of mind 3.1 Machine functionalism 3.2 The representational theory of mind 4. Neural networks 4.1 Relation between neural networks and classical computation 4.2 Arguments for connectionism 4.3 Systematicity and productivity 4.4 Computational neuroscience 5. Computation and representation 5.1 Computation as formal 5.2 Externalism about mental content 5.3 Content-involving computation 6. Alternative conceptions of computation 6.1 Information-processing 6.2 Function evaluation 6.3 Structuralism 6.4 Mechanistic theories 6.5 Pluralism 7. Arguments against computationalism 7.1 Triviality arguments 7.2 Gödel’s incompleteness theorem 7.3 Limits of computational modeling 7.4 Temporal arguments 7.5 Embodied cognition Bibliography Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries 1. Turing machines The intuitive notions of computation and algorithm are central to mathematics. Roughly speaking, an algorithm is an explicit, step-by-step procedure for answering some question or solving some problem. An algorithm provides routine mechanical instructions dictating how to proceed at each step. Obeying th