Combining Texts

Ideas for 'fragments/reports', 'The Logic of What Might Have Been' and 'works'

unexpand these ideas     |    start again     |     choose another area for these texts

display all the ideas for this combination of texts


2 ideas

18. Thought / B. Mechanics of Thought / 6. Artificial Thought / a. Artificial Intelligence
Is thought a syntactic computation using representations? [Fodor, by Rey]
     Full Idea: The modest mentalism of the Computational/Representational Theory of Thought (CRTT), associated with Fodor, says mental processes are computational, defined over syntactically specified entities, and these entities represent the world (are also semantic).
     From: report of Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by Georges Rey - Contemporary Philosophy of Mind Int.3
     A reaction: This seems to imply that if you built a machine that did all these things, it would become conscious, which sounds unlikely. Do footprints 'represent' feet, or does representation need prior consciousness?
18. Thought / C. Content / 1. Content
Maybe narrow content is physical, broad content less so [Lyons on Fodor]
     Full Idea: Fodor is concerned with producing a realist and physicalist account of 'narrow content' (i.e. wholly in-the-head content).
     From: comment on Jerry A. Fodor (works [1986]) by William Lyons - Approaches to Intentionality p.54
     A reaction: The emergence of 'wide' content has rather shaken Fodor's game plan. We can say "Oh dear, I thought I was referring to H2O", so there must be at least some narrow aspect to reference.