more on this theme | more from this thinker | more from this text
Full Idea
It may be possible to have propositional attitudes without having the mental representations tokened in one's head. ...We may say a chess-playing computer thinks it should develop its queen early, though we know it has no representation with that content.
Gist of Idea
A computer may have propositional attitudes without representations
Source
E Margolis/S Laurence (Concepts [2009], 1.1)
Book Ref
'Stanford Online Encyclopaedia of Philosophy', ed/tr. Stanford University [plato.stanford.edu], p.3
A Reaction
[Thye cite Dennett - who talks of the 'intentional stance'] It is, of course, a moot point whether we would attribute a propositional attitude (such as belief) to a machine once we knew that it wasn't representing the relevant concepts.