creators_name: Harnad, Stevan
type: journalp
datestamp: 2001-06-19
lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:41
metadata_visibility: show
title: Thoughts as Activation Vectors in Recurrent Nets, or Concentric Epicenters, or...
ispublished: pub
subjects: comp-sci-neural-nets
subjects: phil-mind
full_text_status: public
keywords: neural network, hermeneutics, Turing Test, philosophy of mind
abstract: Churchland underestimates the power and purpose of the Turing Test, dismissing it as the trivial game to which
the Loebner Prize (offered for the computer program that can fool judges into thinking it's human) has reduced it, whereas it
is really an exacting empirical criterion: It requires that the candidate model for the mind have our full behavioral capacities
-- so fully that it is indistinguishable from any of us, to any of us (not just for one Contest night, but for a lifetime). Scaling
up to such a model is (or ought to be) the programme of that branch of reverse bioengineering called cognitive science. It's
harmless enough to do the hermeneutics after the research has been successfully completed, but self-deluding and
question-begging to do it before. 
date: 1995
date_type: published
publication: Nature
volume: 378
pagerange: 455-456
refereed: TRUE
citation:   Harnad, Stevan  (1995) Thoughts as Activation Vectors in Recurrent Nets, or Concentric Epicenters, or...  [Journal (Paginated)]     
document_url: http://cogprints.org/1598/1/harnad95.churchland.bookrev.html