Minds, Brains, and Computers

Minds, Brains, and Computers presents a vital resource -- the most comprehensive interdisciplinary selection of seminal papers in the foundations of cognitive science, from leading figures in artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.

Preface viii

Part I The Mind as Computer 1

Introduction 3

1. A History of Thinking 8
D. Dellarosa Cummins

2. Minds and Machines20
H. Putnam

3. Semantic Engines: An Introduction to Mind Design 34
J. Haugeland

4. The Language of Thought: First Approximations 51
J. A. Fodor

5. Vision 69
D. Marr

6. GPS, A Program that Simulates Human Thought 84
A. Newell and H. Simon

7. A Procedural Model of Language Understanding 95
T. Winograd

8. A General Learning Theory and its Application to Schema Abstraction 114
J. R. Anderson and P. J. Kline, and C. M. Beasley, Jr

9. Minds, Brains, and Programs 140
J. R. Searle

10. Computing, Machinery, and Intelligence 153
M. Turing

Part II The Mind as Neural Network 169

Introduction 171

11. The Perceptron A Probabilistic Model for Information Storage and Organization in the Brian 179
F. Rosenblatt

12. Cognitive Activity in Artificial Neural Networks 198
P. M. Churchland

13. Cooperative Computation of Stereo Disparity 217
D. Marr and T. Poggio

14. On Learning the Past Tenses of English Verbs 225
D. E. Rumelhart and J. L. McClelland

15. Parallel Networks that Learn to Pronounce English Text 259
T. J. Sejnowski and C. R. Rosenberg

16. Connectionism and the Problem of Systematicity Why Smolensky's Solution Won't Work 273
J. A. Fodor and B. P. McLaughlin

17. Connectionism, Constituency, and the Language of Thought 286
P. Smolensky

18. Rules and Connections in Human Language 307
S. Pinker and A. Prince

Part III The Mind as Brain 319

Introduction 321

19. The Organization of Behavior 323
D. O. Hebb

20. In Search of the Engram 333
K. Lashley

21. A Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity 351
W. S. McCulloch and W. H. Pitts

22. Is Consciousness a Brain Process? 361
U. T. Place

23. The Computational Brain: Anatomical and Physiological Techniques 367
P. S. Churchland and T. J. Sejnowski

24. What the Frog's Eye Tells the Frog's Brain 382
J. Y. Lettvin, H. K. Maturana, W. S. McCulloch, and W. H. Pitts

25. Positron Emission Tomographic Studies of the Cortical Anatomy of Single-word Processing 397
S. E. Petersen, P. T. Fox, M. I. Posner, M. Minton, and M. E. Raichle

26. Computational Neuroscience 405
T. J. Sejnowski, C. Koch, and P. S. Churchland

27. Two Cortical Visual Systems 420
L. G. Ungerleider and M. Mishkin

Part IV Special Topics 445

Introduction 447

28. Recent Contributions to the Theory of Innate Ideas 452
N. Chomsky

29. The 'Innateness Hypothesis' and the Explanatory Models in Linguistics 458
H. Putnam

30. Linguistics and Philosophy 464
N. Chomsky

31. Initial Knowledge Six Suggestions 484
E. Spelke

32. Précis of the Modularity of Mind 493
J. A. Fodor

33. Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes 500
P. M. Churchland

34. The Social Function of Intellect 513
N. Humphrey

35. Origins of Domain Specificity: The Evolution of Functional Organization 523
L. Cosmides and J. Tooby

Index 544

"This anthology features papers that are historically important to cognitive science, giving about equal billing to symbolic, connectionist, and neuroscience viewpoints. Although the papers convey some key findings, their strong point is clarifying assumptions that underlie these three perspectives. Students will find this a valuable sourcebook for the major research traditions." Lance Rips, Northwestern University Robert Cummins is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis. He is the author of The Nature of Psychological Explanation (1983), Meaning and Mental Representation (1987), and Representations, Targets and Attitudes (1996), as well as many articles and several edited volumes. He specializes in the foundations of cognitive science and the nature of mental representation.

Denise D. Cummins is Associate Research Professor of Social Sciences at the University of California, Davis. She is the author of The Other Side of Psychology (1995), The Evolution of Mind (ed. with Colin Allen), and Human Reasoning: an Evolutionary Perspective as well as numerous articles and reviews. She specializes in higher cognition from an evolutionary perspective.

This book presents a vital resource -- a comprehensive interdisciplinary selection of seminal papers in the foundations of cognitive science, from leading figures in artificial intelligence, linguistics, philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience.

The collection is organized around three broad conceptions of the mind: the mind as computer program, the mind as a neural network, and the mind as brain. Each category includes papers that articulate the conception in question, papers that illustrate it, papers that interpret or criticize it, and papers that provide necessary technical background.

Finally, there is a section of classic papers on four broad questions which have shaped contemporary thinking in cognitive science:

What is innate in the mind?

Is the mind a seamless whole, or is it made up of independent modules that differ significantly from each other?

Are our ordinary mental concepts, such as belief, desire, and intention, a good starting place for a scientific understanding of the mind, or are they artifacts of a pre-scientific conception that should be discarded?

How should biology generally, and the evolution of animals in particular, constrain our theories about mental phenomena?

Taken together, these papers give a sense of the history of the field as well as its contents by presenting the argumnets, models, data, and experiments that most crucially influence theory and practice in cognitive science.