Three consecutive special issues of the Journal of Cognitive Science on this topic are on their way out. The first issue opens with David Chalmers’s seminal paper with the same title (which was written in 1993 and posted on his website but never officially published until now) and is followed by four submitted responses. The subsequent two issues contain eight invited responses. Chalmers’s reply will either be published in the third issue or, more likely, in the following issue of the journal.
It’s a strong set of papers that should revive discussion of this important topic. The first of the three issues is already out, although behind a paywall. The second and third issues are in press. For the time being, if anyone is interested in these papers and does not have access to a library that subscribes to the Journal of Cognitive Science, they should probably ask the authors for a copy. The Journal of Cognitive Science has promised to make available the whole set of papers online for free, hopefully in the not too distant future.
Journal of Cognitive Science 12.4
A Computational Foundation for the Study of Cognition I
David Chalmers, A Computational Foundation for the Study of Cognition
Marcin Miłkowski, Beyond Formal Structure: A Mechanistic Perspective on Computation and Implementation
Gerard O’Brien, Defending the Semantic Conception of Computation in Cognitive Science
J. Brendan Ritchie, Chalmers on Implementation and Computational Sufficiency
Brandon N. Towl, Home, Pause, or Break: A Critique of Chalmers on Implementation
Journal of Cognitive Science 13.1
A Computational Foundation for the Study of Cognition II
Curtis Brown, Combinatorial-State Automata and Models of Computation
Frances Egan, Metaphysics and Computational Cognitive Science: Let’s Not Let the Tail Wag the Dog
Michael Rescorla, How to Integrate Representation into Computational Modeling, and Why We Should
Matthias Scheutz, What it is not to implement a computation: A critical analysis of Chalmers’ notion of implemention
Journal of Cognitive Science 13.2
A Computational Foundation for the Study of Cognition III
Stevan Harnad, The Causal Topography of Cognition
Colin Klein, Two Paradigms for Individuating Implementations
Oron Shagrir, Can a Brain Possess Two Minds?
Mark Sprevak, Three challenges to Chalmers on computational implementation