A computability perspective on eliminativist computationalism

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• Dan R. Ghica, Reader at the University of Birmingham
• Monday 08 June 2015, 16:00-17:00
• Mech Eng G42.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Lars Kunze.

Joint work with Arthur Sullivan, Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

Within the philosophy of mind, the term computationalism designates a broad range of approaches from extreme reductivist views of the relation between mind and brain, at one end of the spectrum, to explicitly non-reductivist, autonomy-of-the-mental, views at the other. What holds them all together is commitment to the explanatory usefulness of the analogy between the mind and the digital computer. What determines how strong or hard a version of computationalism is is how literally one takes this analogy, with the hard computationalists holding that all functions of the brain can be replicated by a computer. Our aim is to raise a challenge to at least some versions of computationalism about the mind. It is to show that certain basic features of mental states are logically inconsistent with some common computationalist presumptions. In general, the harder ones computationalism is, and the more global ones computationalism is, the more poignantly our challenge will apply. In particular, we aim to conclusively refute the following hard, global computationalist thesis: all of the functions and phenomena of the mind are computable. Our goal is to articulate a fundamental challenge to the range and scope of computationalism in the philosphy of mind.

This talk is part of the Artificial Intelligence and Natural Computation seminars series.

This talk is included in these lists:

• Artificial Intelligence and Natural Computation seminars
• Computer Science Departmental Series
• Computer Science Distinguished Seminars
• Mech Eng G42
• computer sience

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