Johnny Logic

The Computational Stance

From an email and now to you faithful readers:

I am working on a paper that follows and extends Dennett's approach by the addition of a "computational stance". I am not sure how to frame this stance, as it seems to subsume some of the features of the physical, functional and intentional stances and, at times, threatens to be an unworthy addition to Dennett. Certainly, taking a system to be computational does grant us interesting techniques, while emphasizing important constraints and making some of the system's features salient. Any thoughts on the matter?

Here is the outline I have been using:

1. Introduction
2. What is the Computational Stance?
3. The Appeal of the Computational Stance

3.1. Currency
3.2. Reducibility
3.3. Universality
3.4. Scalability
3.5. Rigor
3.6. Constructability/Simulatability

4. A Broad Conception of Computation
5. Levels of Analysis, Pattern and Prediction

5.1. Computationally Explicable Phenomena

6. Critiques

6.1. Irrelevance
6.2. Arbitrariness
6.3. Vacuity
6.4. Meaninglessness
6.5. Greedy Reductionism

7. Is The Computational Stance a Metastance?
8. Conclusion

Posted by John at November 25, 2003 03:27 PM