Book review: P.N. Baryshnikov “Computational models of the mind: From code to meaning” (Moscow: LENAND, 2022. 320 pp.)

Abstract

The cognitive revolution of the mid-20th century allowed scientists to return consciousness into respectable scientific research, thereby bypassing the eliminativist approaches of behav­iorism and physicalism. Machine functionalism adopted the computer metaphor and became the philosophical foundation for this new scientific trend. In the second half of the 20th cen­tury, many significant data were obtained by the efforts of cognitive scientists on how men­tal processes are arranged, but the methodological boundaries of computational theories and the ontological status of mental states remained a serious problem. This complex issue is closely analyzed by P.N. Baryshnikov in his book “Computational models of the mind: From code to meaning”. Moving along the historical line of development of cognitive sci­ence and related philosophical conceptions, the author demonstrates that computational the­ories are not able to explain the semantic aspect of mental states, although they have heuris­tic potential for creating artificial intelligent systems that implement some of the cognitive functions of the human mind.