Abstract
Connectionism has recently attracted much interest in cognitive science because it seems to promise an alternative to the now traditional rule-based approaches to modeling cognition. Philosophers have also begun to take note of connectionism. My objective in this paper is to provide a brief introduction to some of the philosophical issues generated by connectionism. I will not in this paper be defending connectionism per se, although I would not be undertaking a mission such as this if I did not think connectionism could offer some important contributions to our understanding of mind and mental phenomena. My goal is rather to generate and focus further discussion. Thus, in each section of this paper I will pose and briefly discuss one or more questions. In discussing these questions I will indicate some answers that I find attractive, but I will not attempt to advance definitive arguments for them on this occasion.
This manuscript was prepared while I was a visiting fellow at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. I am most grateful to the Center for its hospitality and to Georgia State University for providing me a leave of absence. Adele Abrahamsen, Larry Barsalou, David Blumenfeld, C. Grant Luckhardt, Marek Lugowski, Ulric Neisser, and Robert McCauley have each provided me with valuable comments for which I am thankful.
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Bechtel, W. (1991). Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind: An Overview. 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_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-3524-5_2
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