Abstract
The most dramatic and potentially revolutionary development in recent psychology is the suggestion that psychological explanations may be formulable as computer programmes. Such a suggestion has immense prima facie appeal to the scientific and philosophical community, for it seems to approach some kind of ideal of scientific explanation and intellectual understanding. But this very attractiveness should make us cautious. Before accepting such a programme of research unreflectively, we should try to make explicit the assumptions behind its approach. Baring these presuppositions might expose difficulties and equivocations not otherwise readily apparent.
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References
B. F. Skinner, Verbal Behavior (Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957).
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Charles Taylor in The Explanation of Behavior, (Humanities Press, 1965) has already criticised this assumption as it appears in contemporary behaviourism. This paper can be construed as an attempt to give a parallel critique of mentalism.
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For a much fuller discussion of context dependence, its unprogrammability and the problems it raises for cognitive simulation and artificial intelligence, cf. H. L. Dreyfus, What Computers Can’t Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason (Harper and Row, June 1972).
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© 1974 Royal Institute of Philosophy
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Dreyfus, H., Haugeland, J. (1974). The Computer as a Mistaken Model of the Mind. In: Brown, S.C. (eds) Philosophy of Psychology. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02110-9_12
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-02110-9_12
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-02112-3
Online ISBN: 978-1-349-02110-9
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