“Language barrier” in theories of mind and limitations of the computational approach
Philosophy Journal May 1, 2024 P. Baryshnikov
Computational models in philosophy of mind and empirical science face fundamental limitations that prevent them from correctly addressing the ontology of consciousness. The conceptual level of computational approaches cannot formulate questions about consciousness's nature, despite their empirical success. Computationalism in philosophical theories of consciousness is a practice of word usage that describes information properties of consciousness within methodological rules. Limitations include the lack of a scientific theory of subjectivity, irreducibility of external properties of consciousness to internal states, and fundamental restrictions from computer mathematics on completeness and consistency. The paper classifies anti-computational programs and discusses difficulties formalizing nonlinear processes, predicting emergent properties of autonomous systems, and limitations from non-standard computational processes. Set-theoretic reductive realism and p-adic number systems are considered as possible alternatives.