Section 4.1
• What is the physical symbol system hypothesis? Why it is important to artificial intelligence and human mind studies?
• Does problem solving lie at the heart of intelligence, as Newell and Simon suggest?
Section 4.2
• Is intentional realism the correct approach to thinking about propositional attitudes? What are some other options?
• Is causation by content a puzzling phenomenon? What do you think of Fodor’s proposed solution to it?
Section 4.3
• Is Searle’s Russian room thought experiment a convincing argument?
• What are the principal objections to the Russian room argument? How might a defender of the argument respond?
• In general, what do you think of the use of thought experiments?
Travelling salesman problem (video from YouTube)
Missionaries and cannibals problem (online demonstration)
What our language habits reveal (a TED talk by Steven Pinker)
Steven Pinker – The Stuff of Thought (video from YouTube RSA channel)
Animation of Steven Pinker on language and the mind (from RSA Animate)
4.1 The Physical Symbol System Hypothesis
The computational theory of mind (entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Computer science as empirical inquiry: Symbols and search (paper by Newell and Simon, 1976, in Communications of the ACM)
Physical symbol systems (paper by Newell, 1980, in Cognitive Science)
The physical symbol system: Status and prospects (book chapter by Nils Nilsson, 2007, in 50 Years of Artificial Intelligence)
4.2 From Physical Symbol Systems to the Language of Thought
The computational theory of mind (entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The language of thought hypothesis (entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The language of thought hypothesis (entry from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Mental causation (entry from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Rethinking the language of thought (paper by Schneider and Katz, 2012, in WIREs Cognitive Science)
4.3 The Russian Room Argument and the Turing Test
The Turing test (entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
The Chinese room argument (entry from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Chinese room argument (entry from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Searle and the Chinese Room Argument (entry from The Mind Project)
The Turing test page (from The Alan Turing Internet Scrapbook)
Turing test: 50 years later (paper by Saygin, Cicekli, and Akman, 2001, in Minds and Machines)
Minds, brains, and programs (paper by Searle, 1980, in Behavioral and Brain Sciences)
Minds, machines and Searle (paper by Harnad, 1989, in Journal of Theoretical and Experimental Artificial Intelligence)
The symbol grounding problem (paper by Harnad, 1990, in Physica D)
Solving the symbol-grounding problem: A critical review of 15 years of research (paper by Taddeo and Floridi, 2005, in Journal of Experimental and Theoretical Artificial Intelligence)
