Thinking Computers and Virtual Persons: Essays on the Intentionality of Machines

by Eric Dietrich (editor)

Thinking Computers and Virtual Essays on the Intentionality of Machines explains how computations are meaningful and how computers can be cognitive agents like humans. This book focuses on the concept that cognition is computation. Organized into four parts encompassing 13 chapters, this book begins with an overview of the analogy between intentionality and phlogiston, the 17th-century principle of burning. This text then examines the objection to computationalism that it cannot prevent arbitrary attributions of content to the various data structures and representations involved in a computational process. Other chapters consider that the notion of original intentionality is incoherent. This book argues as well that the only way to build an intelligent machine is to build a neural network. The final chapter claims that an entire theoretical framework in cognitive psychology is incompatible with the view that human brains are computers of some sort. This book is a valuable resource for cognitive scientists.

363 pages, Kindle Edition

Published May 10, 2014

About the author

Eric Dietrich is a professor of philosophy at Binghamton University. Before studying philosophy, he was a concert pianist and mountain climber. He has a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Wyoming, and a doctorate in philosophy from the University of Arizona. Between those two degrees, he worked for a Nasa/Defense Department contractor in their artificial intelligence unit. He is the author of numerous papers, most recently focusing on paraconsistent logic and true contradictions. His most-read paper is "There is no progress in philosophy" (Essays in Philosophy, vol. 12 iss. 2, 2011; http://commons.pacificu.edu/eip/vol12...). With Tara Fox Hall, he wrote "The Allure of the Serial Killer," which came out in the book Serial Killers, edited by Sara Waller. He co-authored Sisyphus's Boulder: Consciousness and the Limits of the Knowable, a book on consciousness's resistance to scientific explanation. He also edits the Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence.