Synthese

, Volume 79, Issue 1, pp 119–141 | Cite as

Semantics and the computational paradigm in cognitive psychology

  • Eric Dietrich
Article

Abstract

There is a prevalent notion among cognitive scientists and philosophers of mind that computers are merely formal symbol manipulators, performing the actions they do solely on the basis of the syntactic properties of the symbols they manipulate. This view of computers has allowed some philosophers to divorce semantics from computational explanations. Semantic content, then, becomes something one adds to computational explanations to get psychological explanations. Other philosophers, such as Stephen Stich, have taken a stronger view, advocating doing away with semantics entirely. This paper argues that a correct account of computation requires us to attribute content to computational processes in order to explain which functions are being computed. This entails that computational psychology must countenance mental representations. Since anti-semantic positions are incompatible with computational psychology thus construed, they ought to be rejected. Lastly, I argue that in an important sense, computers are not formal symbol manipulators.

Keywords

Cognitive Psychology Mental Representation Symbol Manipulator Cognitive Scientist Semantic Content 
These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
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Copyright information

© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1989

Authors and Affiliations

  • Eric Dietrich
    • 1
  1. 1.Computing Research LaboratoryNew Mexico State UniversityLa CrucesUSA

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