Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind

This series will include monographs and collections of studies devoted to the investigation and exploration of knowledge, information and data processing systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal, or machine. Its scope is intended to span the full range of interests from classical problems in the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology through issues in cognitive psychology and sociobiology (concerning the mental capabilities of other species) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and to computer science. While primary emphasis will be placed upon theoretical, conceptual and epistemological aspects of these problems and domains, empirical, experimental and methodological studies will also appear from time to time. One of the most, if not the most, exciting developments within cognitive science has been the emergence of connectionism as an alternative to the computational conception of the mind that tends to dominate the discipline. In this volume, John Tienson and Terence Horgan have brought together a fine collection of stimulating studies on connectionism and its significance. As the Introduction explains, the most pressing questions concern whether or not connectionism can provide a new conception of the nature of mentality. By focusing on the similarities and differences between connectionism and other approaches to cognitive science, the chapters of this book supply valuable resources that advance our understanding of these difficult issues. J. H. F.

I. Overview. - Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind: An Overview. - II. Connectionism vs. Classical Cognitive Science. - Connectionism, Computation, and Cognition. - Connectionism and the Notion of Levels. - Representation and Rule-Instantiation in Connectionist Systems. - What Connectionists Cannot Do: The Threat to Classical AI. - III. Connectionism and Conditioning. - Connectionism in Pavlovian Harness. - Connectionism and Conditioning. - IV. Does Cognition Require Syntactically Structured Representations? . - Systematicity, Structured Representations and Cognitive Architecture: A Reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn. - An Explanatory Budget for Connectionism and Eliminativism. - Settling into a New Paradigm. - Putting a Price on Cognition. - V. Can Connectionism Provide Syntactically Structured Representations? . - The Constituent Structure of Connectionist Mental States: A Reply to Fodor and Pylyshyn. - Representation in Pictorialism and Connectionism. - Connectionism and the Problem of Systematicity: Why Smolensky s Solution Doesn t Work. - Classical Questions, Radical Answers: Connectionism and the Structure of Mental Representations. - Connectionism versus Symbolism in High-Level Cognition. - VI. Connectionism and Philosophy. - Connectionism and the Specter of Representationalism. - Is Perception Cognitively Mediated. - Leaping to Conclusions: Connectionism, Consciousness, and the Computational Mind. - Name Index.