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Single Idea 3199

[filed under theme 17. Mind and Body / E. Mind as Physical / 4. Connectionism ]

Full Idea

In connectionism, each node is given an activation level, and each branch a weight, according to possible degree of effect. This results in 'excitatory' and 'inhibitory' connections.

Gist of Idea

Connectionism assigns numbers to nodes and branches, and plots the outcomes

Source

Georges Rey (Contemporary Philosophy of Mind [1997], 8.8)

Book Ref

Rey,Georges: 'Contemporary Philosophy of Mind' [Blackwell 1997], p.226

A Reaction

Whether such a system could ever be 'conscious' is not the only interesting question. What could such a system do? Could it ever be good at philosophy?

The 14 ideas with the same theme [mind is the sum of many associations/connections]:

3075 Could a cloud have a headache if its particles formed into the right pattern? [Harman]
2490 Modern connectionism is just Hume's theory of the 'association' of 'ideas' [Fodor]
2447 Hume has no theory of the co-ordination of the mind [Fodor]
12624 Only the labels of nodes have semantic content in connectionism, and they play no role [Fodor]
2991 Hume's associationism offers no explanation at all of rational thought [Fodor]
4998 Instead of representation by sentences, it can be by a distribution of connectionist strengths [Kirk,R]
3200 Pattern recognition is puzzling for computation, but makes sense for connectionism [Rey]
3201 Connectionism explains well speed of perception and 'graceful degradation' [Rey]
3202 Connectionism explains irrationality (such as the Gamblers' Fallacy) quite well [Rey]
3199 Connectionism assigns numbers to nodes and branches, and plots the outcomes [Rey]
2984 Perceptions could give us information without symbolic representation [Lyons]
7511 Neural networks can generalise their training, e.g. truths about tigers apply mostly to lions [Pinker]
7512 There are five types of reasoning that seem beyond connectionist systems [Pinker, by PG]
18562 Connectionists cannot distinguish concept-memories from their background, or the processes [Machery]