Social cognition, the chinese room, and the robot replies
pp. 83-97
in: Zdravko Radman (ed), Knowing without thinking, Berlin, Springer, 2012Abstract
In philosophy of mind and related disciplines, the standard conceptions of mind have been formulated in terms of a problem space that excludes certain solutions to problems defined in that space. I'll argue that this is the case in much of the recent discussion of social cognition, but also in earlier discussions of artificial intelligence (AI). I'll try to show this by looking at versions of the frame problem — a problem that seems to fall into this solution-resistant space. To be precise, it is not that the frame problem itself has not been properly formulated, but rather that the ways various theorists think of the mind prevent certain solutions from coming into place. Even when a solution is on the horizon, it is often blocked from counted as a solution because our general conception of the mind has not been properly formulated.