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The Computational Theory of the Mind
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The gulf between meaning (semantics) and mechanism (physics) is wide. Classically drawn apart by Descartes, they are inexorably on a collision course.
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Is computing part of natural science, the humanities, mathematics, or something in between?
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The Computational (Cognitivist) theory of the mind states that the mind is like a computer. So what's a computer? Why the computer? Could it be their use of syntax and semantics?
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Yet we have differing understandings of computational semantics. So
the question is incoherent right now.
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The divide between syntax and semantics can be restated as the mind-body problem for machines.
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This is the strong computationalist bet: We are computers in some significant way.
- This is not the weak computationalist bet: We can be modeled on computers.
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So weak it's vacuous: Anything can be modeled on computers, such as thunderstorms. Yet simulated thunderstorms don't get anyone wet.
- Problem might be easier to solve for computers: since we build them. Linguistic theories aren't prescriptive for language, and language exists without linguists and stars exist separately from celestial mechanics.