Behavioural Explanation in the Realm of Non-mental Computing Agents

Minds and Machines 25 (1):37-56 (2015)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Recently, many philosophers have been inclined to ascribe mentality to animals on the main grounds that they possess certain complex computational abilities. In this paper I contend that this view is misleading, since it wrongly assumes that those computational abilities demand a psychological explanation. On the contrary, they can be just characterised from a computational level of explanation, which picks up a domain of computation and information processing that is common to many computing systems but is autonomous from the domain of psychology. Thus, I propose that it is possible to conceive insects and other animals as mere computing agents, without having any commitment to ascribe mentality to them. I conclude by sketching a proposal about how to draw the line between mere computing and genuine mentality

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,139

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Individuation without Representation.Joe Dewhurst - 2018 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 69 (1):103-116.
Info-computational Constructivism and Cognition.G. Dodig-Crnkovic - 2014 - Constructivist Foundations 9 (2):223-231.
Locating'Agency'Within Ubiquitous Computing Systems.Adam Glen Swift - 2007 - International Review of Information Ethics 8:36-41.

Analytics

Added to PP
2015-02-18

Downloads
58 (#370,468)

6 months
8 (#591,777)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Bernardo Aguilera Dreyse
University of Sheffield

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

The Language of Thought.Jerry Fodor - 1975 - Harvard University Press.
Vision.David Marr - 1982 - W. H. Freeman.
Origins of Objectivity.Tyler Burge - 2010 - Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
Brainstorms.Daniel C. Dennett - 1978 - MIT Press.

View all 61 references / Add more references