•  2150
    John Searle once said: "The Chinese room shows what we knew all along: syntax by itself is not sufficient for semantics. (Does anyone actually deny this point, I mean straight out? Is anyone actually willing to say, straight out, that they think that syntax, in the sense of formal symbols, is really the same as semantic content, in the sense of meanings, thought contents, understanding, etc.?)." I say: "Yes". Stuart C. Shapiro has said: "Does that make any sense? Yes: Everything makes sense. The…Read more
  •  868
    For centuries, philosophers studying the great mysteries of human subjectivity have focused on the mind/body problem and the difference between human beings and animals. Now a new ontological question takes center stage: to what extent can a manufactured object (a computer) exhibit qualities of mind? There have been passionate exchanges between those who believe that a "manufactured mind" is possible and those who believe that mind cannot exist except as a living, socially situated, embodied per…Read more
  •  2675
    Semiotic Systems, Computers, and the Mind: How Cognition Could Be Computing
    International Journal of Signs and Semiotic Systems 2 (1): 32-71. 2012.
    In this reply to James H. Fetzer’s “Minds and Machines: Limits to Simulations of Thought and Action”, I argue that computationalism should not be the view that (human) cognition is computation, but that it should be the view that cognition (simpliciter) is computable. It follows that computationalism can be true even if (human) cognition is not the result of computations in the brain. I also argue that, if semiotic systems are systems that interpret signs, then both humans and computers are s…Read more
  •  158
    Predication, fiction, and artificial intelligence
    Topoi 10 (1): 79-111. 1991.
    This paper describes the SNePS knowledge-representation and reasoning system. SNePS is an intensional, propositional, semantic-network processing system used for research in AI. We look at how predication is represented in such a system when it is used for cognitive modeling and natural-language understanding and generation. In particular, we discuss issues in the representation of fictional entities and the representation of propositions from fiction, using SNePS. We briefly survey four philoso…Read more
  •  1326
    In Defense of Contextual Vocabulary Acquisition: How to Do Things with Words in Context
    In Anind Dey, Boicho Kokinov, David Leake & Roy Turner (eds.), Proceedings of the 5th International and Interdisciplinary Conference on Modeling and Using Context, Springer-verlag Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence 3554. pp. 396--409. 2005.
    Contextual vocabulary acquisition (CVA) is the deliberate acquisition of a meaning for a word in a text by reasoning from context, where “context” includes: (1) the reader’s “internalization” of the surrounding text, i.e., the reader’s “mental model” of the word’s “textual context” (hereafter, “co-text” [3]) integrated with (2) the reader’s prior knowledge (PK), but it excludes (3) external sources such as dictionaries or people. CVA is what you do when you come across an unfamiliar word in your…Read more
  •  60
    "Exploring Meinong's Jungle and Beyond" by Richard Routley (review)
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 44 (4): 539. 1984.
  •  1744
    Models and minds
    with Stuart C. Shapiro
    In Robert C. Cummins (ed.), Philosophy and AI: Essays at the Interface, Mit Press. pp. 215--259. 1991.
    Cognitive agents, whether human or computer, that engage in natural-language discourse and that have beliefs about the beliefs of other cognitive agents must be able to represent objects the way they believe them to be and the way they believe others believe them to be. They must be able to represent other cognitive agents both as objects of beliefs and as agents of beliefs. They must be able to represent their own beliefs, and they must be able to represent beliefs as objects of beliefs. These …Read more