Minds and Computers : An Introduction to the Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence

substrate independence
the ability to be realised in any substrate – it
is a property of functionalist theories of mind that mental states are
held to be substrate independent.
symmetrical
a property of relations such that for all A and B, if A
stands in the relation to B then B stands in that relation to A. An
example is ‘being a sibling of ’.
synapse
a connection between neurons.
syntax
the rule governed combination of symbols.
terminal state
a generated state of some formal system such that no
rules of the system apply to it.
token physicalism
the philosophical theory of mind according to
which, whenever a subject is in a mental state, they are in some
neural state but no identification is made between types of mental
and neural states.
transduction
the process by which an electrical signal is converted to
a chemical signal and vice versa.
transfer function
one of the two functions implemented by each pro-
cessing node of an artificial neural network, which determines what
a node’s level of activation should be given its a
fferent activation
(and possibly its antecedent level of activation).
transitive
a property of relations such that for all A, B and C, if A
stands in the relation to B and B stands in the relation to C, then A
stands in that relation to C. An example is ‘being taller than’.
Turing test
a test involving human and computer participants and a
human interrogator, such that if the computer can deceive the
human interrogator into believing it is human, we should be pre-
pared to say of the computer that it has a mind.
universal machine
a particular kind of register machine which can,
by virtue of Gödel coding, take any register machine program as
input and operate that register machine.