Journal international d'intelligence d'essaim et de calcul évolutif

Abstrait

Computationalism: An Overview

Khomonenko M

Computer science has been notably successful in building devices capable of performing sophisticated intellectual tasks. Impressed by these successes, many philosophers of mind have embraced a computational account of the mind. Computationalism, as this view is called, is committed to the literal truth of the claim that the mind is a computer: Mental states, processes, and events are computational states, processes, and events. An example should make the central idea clear. A physical system computes the addition function if there exists a one-toone mapping from numbers to physical state types of the system such that any numbers n, m, and n+m related as addends and sums are mapped to physical state types related by a causal statetransition relation. In other words, whenever the system goes into the physical state specified under the mapping as n, and then goes into the physical state specified under the mapping as m, it is caused to go into the physical state specified under the mapping as n+m.