I apologize for the long post. It’s inspired by an email exchange I’ve had with Anna-Mari Rusanen. One recurring theme in philosophy of cognitive science is David Marr’s distinction of computational, algorithmic, and implementational levels (from his book Vision, 1982). Sometimes people assimilate Marr’s computational level to Chomsky’s competence. …
It is possible to take two opposite lines on the origin of the modern computer. (There should also be a place for Babbage in this story, but I will set that aside.) One line says that Turing invented the computer in his 1936 mathematical paper. After that, it was just …
As many of you know, the journal Synthese devotes one issue per year to the philosophy of neuroscience. If you work in this area, you should definitely consider submitting articles to John Bickle, who is in charge of the yearly issue in question. This year, most of the yearly Synthese …
Peter Smith has posted the complete draft of his book on Godel’s Theorems online (forthcoming from CUP). Among other things, the book contains some interesting and provocative remarks about the Church-Turing thesis, including an argument that it is provable. Smith invites everyone to check out his book and send him comments and corrections.His …
Philosophers’ Carnival #33 here.Augenblick reports on various interesting things, including the following:The “brain box,” a new computer that attempts to mimick the fault-tolerant characteristics of the brain, is being built by scientists at the University of Manchester.The first neurons to develop in the brain have been identified by researchers at …
Curtis Brown, “Computation, Representation, and Teleology,” presented at E-CAP 2006, June 2006.I just found the online (long) abstract of Brown’s talk. Brown defends two necessary conditions for computation: it must operate on representations (semantic condition) and it must have the function to calculate (teleological condition). I agree with Brown that …
Ehud Shapiro and Yaakov Benenson, “Bringing DNA Computers to Life: Tapping the computing power of biological molecules gives rise to tiny machines that can speak directly to living cells,” Scientific American, May 2006 issue.Jeff Dauer noticed the above article and kindly sent me the link.Ehud Shapiro is a great guy …
