No subject

[D.M.Peterson@computer-science.birmingham.ac.uk]

I'm interested in any possible connection between 'spontaneity' in the
philosophical theory of judgement and connectionism. The idea in the
theory of judgement is that people engage in reasoning, inference,
discussion etc. about some problem, and then a decision or solution
emerges which is good, but is not an inevitable consequence of what
preceeded it.  The preceding reasoning prepares the way for the
decision, but does not necessitate it. The decision or solution is a
*result* of the preceeding thought processes etc., but is not strictly
a logical consequence of them.  So if we take law-governed logical
deduction (or perhaps law-governed deterministic causation) as our
model, it becomes hard to explain this everyday phenomenon. That,
briefly, is the idea, and I'd be very grateful for any leads on any
perspective on this or analagous cases to be found in connectionism.

Please send replies to: D.M.Peterson at cs.bham.ac.uk