Abstract
Our goal in this paper is to locate connectionism in the explanatory enterprise of cognitive science. Consequently we start out by sketching the fundamentals of computationalism, which has been the dominant working hypothesis in the field. After briefly distinguishing computationalism per se from a number of controversial theses that are sometimes packaged with it (by friends and foes alike), we turn to our main focus: how connectionism relates to computationalism. We claim that connectionist research typically shares the defining assumptions of computationalism, though this has often been obscured by confusing computationalism with one or another special form of it (e.g., the language of thought hypothesis). Though connectionist models typically are computationalist in spirit, they needn’t be. We conclude by outlining a possible connectionist position which would constitute a radical departure from basic computationalist assumptions.
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© 1991 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht
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Cummins, R., Schwarz, G. (1991). Connectionism, Computation, and Cognition. 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_3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3524-5_3
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