From Philosophy Now, here is Nicholas Everitt’s instructive review of a book on the philosophy of Artificial Intelligence (AI) by Matt Carter, whose “main concern is to outline and defend the possibility of a computational theory of mind.”

[A major reservation Everitt has with this book] is a matter of substance. Computer programs operate on purely ‘syntactic’ features – ultimately speaking, they depend upon the physical form of the inputs, transformations and outputs. By contrast, human thought is always a thought about something, it represents something, it has a content. It displays what philosophers call ‘intentionality’. One central problem for artificial intelligence is how to get aboutness into computer programs – how to get semantics out of syntactics.

More here. (Stay tuned for a major new essay on the philosophy of AI by yours truly — arriving 22 June.)