Programs as causal models: speculations on mental programs and mental representation
Chater, N. and Oaksford, Mike (2013) Programs as causal models: speculations on mental programs and mental representation. Cognitive Science 37 (6), pp. 1171-1191. ISSN 0364-0213.
Abstract
Judea Pearl has argued that counterfactuals and causality are central to intelligence, whether natural or artificial, and has helped create a rich mathematical and computational framework for formally analyzing causality. Here, we draw out connections between these notions and various current issues in cognitive science, including the nature of mental “programs” and mental representation. We argue that programs (consisting of algorithms and data structures) have a causal (counterfactual-supporting) structure; these counterfactuals can reveal the nature of mental representations. Programs can also provide a causal model of the external world. Such models are, we suggest, ubiquitous in perception, cognition, and language processing.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| School: | Birkbeck Faculties and Schools > Faculty of Science > School of Psychological Sciences |
| Depositing User: | Administrator |
| Date Deposited: | 22 Jul 2013 12:22 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Aug 2023 17:06 |
| URI: | https://eprints.bbk.ac.uk/id/eprint/7759 |
Statistics
Additional statistics are available via IRStats2.
Archive Staff Only (login required)
 |
Edit/View Item |