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Over the past thirty years, it is been common to hear the mind likened to a digital computer. This essay is concerned
with a particular philosophical view that holds that the mind literally is a digital computer (in a specific sense of “computer”
to be developed), and that thought literally is a kind of computation. This view—which will be called the “Computational
Theory of Mind” (CTM)—is thus to be distinguished from other and broader attempts to connect the mind with computation,
including (a) various enterprises at modeling features of the mind using computational modeling techniques, and (b) employing
some feature or features of production-model computers (such as the stored program concept, or the distinction between hardware
and software) merely as a guiding metaphor for understanding some feature of the mind. This entry is therefore concerned solely
with the Computational Theory of Mind (CTM) proposed by Hilary Putnam [1961] and developed most notably for philosophers by
Jerry Fodor [1975, 1980, 1987, 1993].
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3.3 The novice chess player might follow rules like “on the first
move, advance the King's pawn two spaces”, “seek to control the center”, and so on. But following such rules
is precisely the mark of the novice. The chess master simply “sees” the “right move”. There
at least seems to be no rule-following involved, but merely a skilled activity. (Since the original publication of
What Computers Can't Do in 1972, the play level of the best chess computers has risen dramatically; however, it bears
noting that the brute force methods employed by champion chess computers seem to bear little resemblance to either
novice or expert play in humans.) Dreyfus illustrates his claims with references to the problems faced by AI researchers
who attempted to codify expert knowledge into computer programs. The success or failure here really has little to
do with the computing machinery, but with whether expert competence in the domain in question can be captured in
an algorithmic procedure. In certain well-circumscribed domains this has succeeded...
Merleau-Ponty's account of how a skilled agent moves towards
“maximum grip.”
3.5 Searle's conclusion is that an object is a computer,
not in virtue of its intrinsic properties, but only in relation to an interpretation
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