Computer models of the mind are invalid
ON THE MOTION: Ray Tallis It is a great pleasure to have this joust with Igor who is not only a brilliant thinker about the mind, but also a great intellectual sparring partner. Igor has expressed his dissent from the view that I'm going to advance in support of the motion which is that ‘computer models of the mind are invalid’, 1 in his book: The World in My Mind, My Mind In The World: Key Mechanisms of Consciousness in Humans, Animals and Machines . He actually devotes five pages of the final chapter to what he calls ‘Tallis's complaint’ which I am now going to make public. The point of issue is whether computer models of the mind are valid. I am going to argue that they are not because the computational theory of mind is invalid. Igor may go on to argue that even if the computational theory of mind is invalid it may still be useful in the sense of being fruitful. I will leave him to prove that and simply suggest to you that while barking up the wrong tree may giv