Ingliz wrote:The appearance of an objective existence to an external world is not necessarily the objective existence of the external world. By subjecting moral intuitions to the same, loose conditions we use for accepting metaphysical intuitions we are being rational and consistent if we treat them both as useful fictions. We can "save the appearances", by putting forward mathematical relationships which correspond to observation, without making any attempt to suggest a physical explanation for the relationships.
If all you do is save the appearances, you still lose the existence of external minds. Very little is needed to save the appearances -- much less than the multitude of 'fictitious' entities within the sciences and philosophy.
I know you like quoting Ingliz, but do not quote me out of context. I am not agreeing with you.
CWR wrote:I must have phrased my question poorly, VP. I was interested in why you "don't endorse a computational theory of mind"; presuming that such a theory is what I think it is.
Well, this is quite complex but generally the idea is that abductive reasoning (reasoning to the best explanation) is not computationally tractable. Since abductive reasoning occurs all the time, at least a significant portion of the mind (the portion responsible for the kind of thinking we're interested in) cannot be computational. Now, I would like to emphasize that this has to do with tractability -- unlike the philosopher Jerry Fodor I do not think we have an apriori objection to the computational mind.
The idea of a computational theory of mind is the "massive modularity thesis" which is the view that the mind is entirely composed of discrete, informationally encapsulated modules that process input (sense data) into output. Each cannot share information with the other, but certain modules can take outputs as inputs. The problem is that abductive reasoning is this sort of global reasoning where the mind takes information from
anywhere it wants and reasons globally. This part of the mind cannot be explained computationally. Minds are not like computers.