Christopher D. Green (1998) Idealisation is Fine; Opportunism is Not . Psycoloquy: 9(37) Connectionist Explanation (30)
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Psycoloquy 9(37): Idealisation is Fine; Opportunism is Not

IDEALISATION IS FINE; OPPORTUNISM IS NOT
Reply to Opie on Connectionist-Explanation

Christopher D. Green
Department of Psychology
York University
Toronto, Ontario M3J 1P3
Canada
http://www.yorku.ca/faculty/academic/christo

christo@yorku.ca

Abstract

Opie (1998) seems to accept my worries about the ontological base of connectionism and resolves them by accepting my suggestion that neurology is the ground of connectionist cognitive science. He goes on to argue that scientists should be given some room to idealise the entities under study. One cannot agree. However, he seems to begs the question in suggesting that units and connections are the very things that units and connections model. There also appear to be some problems with the use of sources in support of his position.

Keywords

artificial intelligence, cognition, computer modelling, connectionism, epistemology, explanation, methodology, neural nets, philosophy of science, theory.

References