EASY’S GETTIN ’ HARDER ALL THE TIME: THE COMPUTATIONAL THEORY AND AFFECTIVE STATES

We argue that A. Damasio’s (1994) Somatic Marker hypothesis can explain why humans don’t generally suffer from the frame problem, arguably the greatest obstacle facing the Computational Theory of Mind. This involves showing how humans with damaged emotional centers are best understood as actually suffering from the frame problem. We are then able to show that, paradoxically, these results provide evidence for the Computational Theory of Mind, and in addition call into question the very distinction between easy and hard problems in the contemporary philosophy of mind. In my view, the frame problem is a lot of what makes cognition so hard to understand... cognitive science without the frame problem is Hamlet without anybody much except Polonius