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An Explanatory Budget for Connectionism and Eliminativism

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Part of the book series: Studies in Cognitive Systems ((COGS,volume 9))

Abstract

Particularly since the Sixties and Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions, new theories in a field are often presented as overthrowing an existing “paradigm,” replacing it with another that is supposed to address the anomalies with which the old one was unable to contend. Presumably the new one is also supposed to handle the old one’s successes; but this is a point that is seldom stressed among revolutionaries, political or scientific.

This paper is a very much expanded version of my commentary (Rey 1988a) on Smolensky (1988). I am grateful to Steven Hamad for permission to use that material here. I also want to thank Micheal Devitt, Jerry Fodor, and especially Ken Taylor for noticing a number of problems in earlier drafts.

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Rey, G. (1991). An Explanatory Budget for Connectionism and Eliminativism. In: Horgan, T., Tienson, J. (eds) Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind. Studies in Cognitive Systems, vol 9. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3524-5_10

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3524-5_10

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