Artificial Intelligence, Mind & the Future
Computational Theory of Mind
Holds that the human mind is fundamentally an information-processing system — that cognition, and perhaps consciousness itself, is a form of computation running on the brain’s neural “hardware.”
Proponents
Warren McCulloch, Walter Pitts, Hilary Putnam, Jerry Fodor
Evidence For
Underpins essentially all of modern cognitive science and AI research, and offers a working, testable framework — the mind as a program running on the brain's hardware — that has produced decades of successful predictions in cognitive psychology.
Evidence Against
Putnam himself later abandoned the view, and critics like John Searle argue that merely running the right program cannot be what genuine understanding actually consists of, however useful computation is as a description of behavior.
Real Sources
Transmissions
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