Computational theory of mind

The computational theory of mind (CTM) claims that the mind is a computing system. Support for this claim comes from the success of artificial computing systems at performing certain learning, reasoning, and language processing tasks as well as the empirical and explanatory fruitfulness of computational modeling in psychology and neuroscience. The idea that reasoning is a kind of computation predates groundbreaking results in computability theory, the invention of computers, and the emergence of cognitive science in the 20th century. However, these advances played a decisive role in developing that seminal idea into a full-fledged CTM. In fact, there is no single CTM; there is a cluster of positions sharing the insight that the mind is somehow computational but disagreeing on such basic questions such as how computational models of mental capacities relate to physical descriptions of concrete systems or what kinds of computations best explain human mental capacities. Although CTM is currently the main paradigm in cognitive science, objections to CTM include the worry that it is explanatorily empty, the contention that CTM is a fundamentally misguided approach to understanding the mental capacities of organisms, and the alleged impossibility of explaining human common sense, creativity, understanding, and consciousness in computational terms.