In the discipline of psychology, how can computers be used to understand the mind?
The study of Cognitive psychology is inextricably linked to the concept of modelling the human mind in terms of machines, especially digital computers, and modelling human cognition in terms of computational algorithms. However, whilst these models are certainly advancing A.I. and computation in an end to itself, it does not necessarily clarify the processes involved in human cognition. James Fezter (1997) asserts that “”If we want to understand the nature of thought, then we have to study thinking, not computing, because they are not the same thing.” Many of these arguments relate to the philosophy of thought, and to the problem of explaining and replicating intentionality using computational models, but the models used by Cognitive science to explain the processes within human cognition are also often flawed at a much less enigmatic level. The allure of the mind as machine metaphor is obvious; if the paradigm held true then instead of modelling the mind, we would be slowly working to
