Gerard J. O'Brien (1998) The Role of Implementation in Connectionist Explanation
. Psycoloquy: 9(06) Connectionist Explanation (3)
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Psycoloquy 9(06): The Role of Implementation in Connectionist Explanation
THE ROLE OF IMPLEMENTATION IN CONNECTIONIST EXPLANATION
Commentary on Green on Connectionist-Explanation
Gerard J. O'Brien
Department of Philosophy
University of Adelaide
South Australia 5005
Australia
http://chomsky.arts.adelaide.edu.au/Philosophy/gobrien/gobrien.htm
gobrien@arts.adelaide.edu.au
Abstract
Green is right to question the explanatory role of
connectionist models in cognitive science. What is more, he is
generally right in his judgement that the only way of interpreting
connectionist models as theories of cognitive phenomena is by
construing them as "literal models of brain activity" (1998, para.
20). This is because connectionist explanations of cognitive
phenomena are more dependent on details of implementation than
their conventional ("classical") counterparts.
Keywords
classicism, cognition, connectionism, explanation,
implementation, methodology, theory.
References
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- Churchland, P.S. (1986) Neurophilosophy. MIT Press
- Churchland, P.S. & Sejnowski, T (1992) The Computational Brain. MIT Press.
- Clark, A. (1990) Connectionism, competence, and explanation. In: The Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, ed. Boden, M. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
- Green, CD. (1998) Are Connectionist Models Theories of Cognition? PSYCOLOQUY 9(4) ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/1998.volume.9/ psyc.98.9.04.connectionist-explanation.1.green
- Marr, D. (1982). Vision. San Francisco: Freeman.
- Sejnowski, T.J. (1986) Open questions about computation in cerebral cortex. In: Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition Vol. 2: Psychological and Biological Models, ed. McClelland, J.L. & Rumelhart, D.E., eds. MIT Press.
- Sejnowski, T.J. & Rosenberg, C. (1987) Paralled networks that learn to pronounce English text. Complex Systems 1: 145-68.
- Smolensky, P. (1988) On the proper treatment of connectionism. Behavioral and Brain Sciences 11: 1-23.