Christopher D. Green (1998) The Degrees of Freedom Would be Tolerable if Nodes Were Neural
. Psycoloquy: 9(26) Connectionist Explanation (23)
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Psycoloquy 9(26): The Degrees of Freedom Would be Tolerable if Nodes Were Neural
THE DEGREES OF FREEDOM WOULD BE TOLERABLE IF NODES WERE NEURAL
Reply to Lamm 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
Lamm (1998) expresses concern that there is a lack of fit
between my call to connectionists to declare themselves to be
direct modelers of neural activity and my concern that
connectionist nets have too many degree of freedom (Green 1998). I
am sympathetic with his worry, but argue that the degrees of
freedom problem does not loom as large once we know what
constraints we are working under -- as we would if we declared that
connectionist nets are literal neural models.
Keywords
artificial intelligence, cognition, computer modelling,
connectionism, epistemology, explanation, methodology, neural nets,
philosophy of science, theory.
References
- Green, C.D. (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
- Lamm, C. (1998) Does brain activity-oriented modelling solve the problem? Commentary on Green on Connectionist-Explanation PSYCOLOQUY 9(19) ftp://ftp.princeton.edu/pub/harnad/Psycoloquy/1998.volume.9/ psycoloquy.98.9.19.connectionist-explanation.16.green