Does intelligence result from the manipulation of structured symbolic                  expressions? Or is it the result of the activation of large networks of densely                  interconnected simple units? Connections and Symbols provides the first systematic                  analysis of the explosive new field of Connectionism that is challenging the basic                  tenets of cognitive science.These lively discussions by Jerry A. Fodor, Zenon W.                  Pylyshyn, Steven Pinker, Alan Prince, Joel Lechter, and Thomas G. Bever raise issues                  that lie at the core of our understanding of how the mind works: Does connectionism                  offer it truly new scientific model or does it merely cloak the old notion of                  associationism as a central doctrine of learning and mental functioning? Which of                  the new empirical generalizations are sound and which are false? And which of the                  many ideas such as massively parallel processing, distributed representation,                  constraint satisfaction, and subsymbolic or microfeatural analyses belong together,                  and which are logically independent?Now that connectionism has arrived with                  full-blown models of psychological processes as diverse as Pavlovian conditioning,                  visual recognition, and language acquisition, the debate is on. Common themes emerge                  from all the contributors to Connections and Symbols: criticism of connectionist                  models applied to language or the parts of cognition employing language like                  operations; and a focus on what it is about human cognition that supports the                  traditional physical symbol system hypothesis. While criticizing many aspects of                  connectionist models, the authors also identify aspects of cognition that could he                  explained by the connectionist models.Steven Pinker is Associate Professor in the                  Department of Psychology and Co-Director of, the Center for Cognitive Science at                  MIT. Connections and Symbols is included in the Cognition Special Issue series,                  edited by Jacques Mehler.

Connections and Symbols (Cognition Special Issue) PDF

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