Can computers think? Are brains computers? (LV / Seminar)

Kohár, Matej

SE/HS                        Can computers think? Are brains computers?

Mi. 14-16

Präsenz

Anmeldung über ISIS

The questions in the seminar's title will lead us to explore the connections between computer science, neuroscience and the philosophy of mind. To answer the first one, we will have to consider a) what thinking is, b) how we recognise when something is doing it, c) what kinds of systems could in principle do it, and d) whether computers are such systems. As we will see, one common (though not universal) answer is that thinking is a kind of computation, and so computers are in principle able to do it by design. But then the second question becomes even more pressing - if brain is the organ of thought, and thinking is computation, then brains must compute. But brains do not look anything like your everyday computers. To resolve this issue, we will need to consider questions analogous to a)-d), but focusing on computation and the brain. 

Diese Veranstaltung kann in folgenden Modulen angerechnet werden:

BA-KulT PHIL 1, 3

MA-PHIL 2, 6

MA-TGWT PHIL 4, 5

BA-KulT FW 6/MA PHIL FW 27

BA-KulT FW 39, 41