Connectionist Concepts: BBS Call for Commentators

[Stevan Harnad]

Below is the abstract of a forthcoming target article to appear in
Behavioral and Brain Sciences (BBS), an international,
interdisciplinary journal that provides Open Peer Commentary on important
and controversial current research in the biobehavioral and cognitive
sciences. Commentators must be current BBS Associates or nominated by a 
current BBS Associate. To be considered as a commentator on this article,
to suggest other appropriate commentators, or for information about how
to become a BBS Associate, please send email to:
	 harnad at confidence.princeton.edu              or write to:
BBS, 20 Nassau Street, #240, Princeton NJ 08542  [tel: 609-921-7771]
____________________________________________________________________

        THE CONNECTIONIST CONSTRUCTION OF CONCEPTS

	Adrian Cussins, New College, Oxford


Keywords: connectionism, representation, cognition, perception,
nonconceptual content, concepts, learning, objectivity, semantics

Computational modelling of cognition depends on an underlying theory
of representation. Classical cognitive science has exploited the
syntax/semantics theory of representation derived from formal
logic. As a consequence, the kind of psychological explanation
supported by classical cognitive science is "conceptualist":
psychological phenomena are modelled in terms of relations between
concepts and between the sensors/effectors and concepts. This kind of
explanation is inappropriate according to Smolensky's "Proper
Treatment of Connectionism" [BBS 11(1) 1988]. Is there an alternative
theory of representation that retains the advantages of classical
theory but does not force psychological explanation into the
conceptualist mold? I outline such an alternative by introducing an
experience-based notion of nonconceptual content and by showing how a
complex construction out of nonconceptual content can satisfy
classical constraints on cognition. Cognitive structure is not
interconceptual but intraconceptual. The theory of representational
structure within concepts allows psychological phenomena to be
explained as the progressive emergence of objectivity. This can be
modelled computationally by transformations of nonconceptual content
which progressively decrease its perspective-dependence through the
formation of a cognitive map.

Stevan Harnad ARPA/INTERNET harnad at confidence.princeton.edu harnad at princeton.edu
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