MECHANISM AND MEANING

Abstract

In recent years numerous philosophers and psychologists have contended that human beings are robots, or automata, or computing machines. Connected with this view is the further idea that to explain human behaviour, or some aspect of it, is in effect to write a ‘program* for a machine capable of simulating that behaviour. Such a program will be a characterization of the internal processes responsible for the behavior of the ‘device*, human being or machine. As Jerry Fodor puts it:understanding the operations of a computer capable of simulat­ ing a given form of behavior is tantamount to understanding the behavior itself.1