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The computational and the representational language-of-thought hypotheses

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 September 2023

David J. Chalmers*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, New York University, New York, NY, USA. chalmers@nyu.edu; consc.net/chalmers

Abstract

There are two versions of the language-of-thought hypothesis (LOT): Representational LOT (roughly, structured representation), introduced by Ockham, and computational LOT (roughly, symbolic computation) introduced by Fodor. Like many others, I oppose the latter but not the former. Quilty-Dunn et al. defend representational LOT, but they do not defend the strong computational LOT thesis central to the classical-connectionist debate.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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