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Philosophy of Mind Is (in Part) Philosophy of Computer Science

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Abstract

In this paper I argue that whether or not a computer can be built that passes the Turing test is a central question in the philosophy of mind. Then I show that the possibility of building such a computer depends on open questions in the philosophy of computer science: the physical Church-Turing thesis and the extended Church-Turing thesis. I use the link between the issues identified in philosophy of mind and philosophy of computer science to respond to a prominent argument against the possibility of building a machine that passes the Turing test. Finally, I respond to objections against the proposed link between questions in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of computer science.

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Notes

  1. A machine can pass the Turing test if its verbal behavior in a text-mediated format is indistinguishable, on average and in the long run, from that of a human being. See Turing (1950).

  2. I define these theses below.

  3. A quantum computer is a physical device in which computation relies on ‘qubits,’ or physical states that both encode information, and are in a state of superposition. See Hagar (2010).

  4. In essence, such a scenario would result in a computer having a locally infinite amount of time to complete its computation, while to an observer the same computation would appear to take a finite amount of time.

  5. Due to copyright restrictions governing the systems emulated, websites offering such services come and go quickly. For a selection of such sites, one can Google the terms ‘web based emulator.’

  6. For example, consider work supporting the so-called ‘enactive theory of perception’ as presented, for example, in Noë (2004).

  7. The Wachowski brothers directed, produced, and wrote the scripts for the Matrix movie trilogy.

  8. I have avoided in this paper discussion of computational functionalism: the theory that having a mind is nothing more than implementing a particular computer. If true, then building minds involves nothing more than building computers. Arguably, too, issues in philosophy of mind can then be subsumed under the philosophy of computer science.

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Acknowledgments

The author is grateful to three anonymous referees, whose comments have resulted in significant improvements to this paper. I am also grateful to audiences at the Dalhousie University Philosophy Department Colloquium Series and the 2010 meeting of the Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and Simulation of Behavior, who commented on previous versions of this paper. Finally, I would like to thank Sara Louise Parks and Duncan MacIntosh for their encouragement and feedback.

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  1. Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, B3H 4P9, Canada

    Darren Abramson

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Abramson, D. Philosophy of Mind Is (in Part) Philosophy of Computer Science. Minds & Machines 21, 203–219 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11023-011-9236-0

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