PARALLEL ARCHITECTURES AND MENTAL COMPUTATION

In a recent paper, Lyngzeidetson [1990] has claimed that a type of parallel computer called the 'Connection Machine' instantiates architectural principles which will 'revolutionize which ''functions'' of the human mind can and cannot be modelled by (non-human) computational automata. In particular, he claims that the Connection Machine architecture shows the anti-mechanist argument from Godel's theorem to be false for at least one kind of parallel computer. In the first part of this paper, I argue that Lyngzeidetson's claims are not supported by his arguments; in the second part I consider some other aspects of parallel computation which may be of theoretical significance in cognitive science.