ABSTRACT
This chapter sketches the history of mechanistic models of the mental, as related to the technological project of trying to build mechanical minds, and discusses the changing use of these models. It describes the Cartesian notion of mechanism, which shaped the debate in the centuries that followed. Early mechanistic proposals are also connected with early attempts to formulate the computational account of thinking and reasoning, upheld notably by Hobbes and Leibniz. The chapter also sketches associationist and behaviorist models of the mind, along with attempts to understand the neural system in terms of connections and associations. It focuses on early computational and cybernetic models of the mind and dealt with computational models of mental mechanisms as proposed by students of artificial intelligence and cognitive science. Different technological artifacts have been treated as models of the mental, from a wax tablet, through clocks and the automated telephone switchboard, to a digital computer.
