Connectionism: Theory and Practice (|c NDCS |t New Directions in Cognitive Science, Vol. 3)

Over the last decade, an emerging form of computational modeling has steadily gained the respect of many researchers as a radically new and promising approach to cognitive science. Known by a number of names, including "connectionism," "neural networks," and "parallel distributed processing" (PDP), this method of computation attempts to model the neural processes that are assumed to underlie cognitive functions in human beings. Unlike the digital computation methods used by AI researchers, connectionist models claim to approximate the kind of spontaneous, creative, and somewhat unpredictable behavior of human agents. However, over the last few years, a heated controversy has arisen over the extent to which connectionist models are able to provide successful explanations for higher cognitive processes. A central theme of this book reviews the adequacy of recent attempts to implement higher cognitive processes in connectionist networks. Cognitive scientists, cognitive psychologists, linguists, philosophers, computer scientists, and others exploring this fascinating science will find this book essential reading. Using Coherence Assumptions To Discover The Underlying Causes Of The Sensory Input / G.e. Hinton And S. Becker -- Modularity, Unsupervised Learning, And Supervised Learning / Michael I. Jordan And Robert A. Jacobs -- A Deeper Unity : Some Feyerabendian Themes In Neurocomputational Form / Paul M. Churchland -- Waarheden Als Koeien / Charles Travis -- Towards A Microstructural Account Of Human Reasoning / David E. Rumelhart -- Connectionism Without Tears / Mark S. Seidenberg -- Connectionist Models In The Information Processing Paradigm / Michael E.j. Masson -- Grammatical Structure And Distributed Representations / Jeffrey L. Elman -- Making Conceptual Space / Tim Van Gelder -- Structured Representations In Connectionist Systems? / Terence Horgan And John Tienson -- Local Modelling In Phonology / John Goldsmith -- Connectionism And The Philosophy Of Mental Representation / William Ramsey -- Connectionism And The Computational Neurobiology Of Curve Detection / Steven W. Zucker, Allan Dobbins, And Lee Iverson -- Pdp Learnability And Innate Knowledge Of Language / David Kirsh. Edited By Steven Davis. Papers From A Conference Held In 1990 At Simon Fraser University, Sponsored By The University's Cognitive Science Programme. Includes Bibliographical References. Part of a series on cognitive behaviour and science, based on a 1990 conference sponsored by the Cognitive Science Program and the Linguistics Department of Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.