Dynamic systems and paradise regained or how to avoid being a calculator

1. Computation and human specialness. The new kid on the block in cognitive science these days is dynamic systems. This way of thinking about the mind is, as usual, radically opposed to computationalism-the hypothesis that thinking is computing. The use of dynamic systems is just the latest in a series of attempts, from Searle's Chinese Room Argument, through the weirdnesses of postmodernism, to overthrown computationalism, which as we all know is a perfectly nice hypothesis about the mind that never hurt anyone. Well, actually that's not true. I suspect that everyone is out gunning for computationalism precisely because it has hurt several people and stepped on several toes. As I have mentioned before in these pages, I believe that the real problem with the general acceptance of computationalism is its perceived association with what I call "The Mechanistic Forces of Darkness." No one wants to be a computer; no one wants t o be told that their mother was a computer. I think part of this fear is that most people think of computers as things to type letters on, things for playing games, and things for email. Computers are tools. Since humans aren't merely word processors, Gameboys, nor emailers-since humans aren't tools-it follows that humans aren't computers. But beyond this mistaken focus on computers as tools, there lies another, deeper dissatisfaction, which focuses on computation itself. This is the feeling that computation just seems like the wrong way to think about the wonderful complexity that is the human mind. Most anticomputationalists do not want a theory of the human mind