Connectionism

Connectionism is a way of modelling how the brain uses streams of sensory inputs to understand the world and produce behaviour, based on cognitive processes which actually occur. This book describes the principles, and their application to explaining how the brain produces speech, forms memories and recognises faces, how intellect develops, and how it deteriorates after brain damage. Part I explores the basic concepts, the architecture and properties of the most common connectionist models, and how connectionist learning rules work. Part II describes and evaluates connectionist models of a variety of cognitive processes, including the learning and production of speech, the formation of episodic memories and visual representations, the development of cognitive processes in infancy, and their breakdown in brain-damaged patients. The models range from some well-known classics to others at the frontiers of current research. Each chapter ends with a list of recommended further reading. Also included is a disk with the software for running tlearn, a user-friendly simulator for connectionist modelling of cognitive processes, which will run on either PCs or Macs. The software includes exercises to introduce the simulator, and working copies to explore some of the models described in the text. A reference handbook for tlearn is included to enable readers to build their own models. The authors, as well as being leading researchers in their field, have extensive experience of teaching connectionism to undergraduates. They have written the first comprehensive, up-to-date textbook on connectionist modelling, designed specifically for advanced undergraduates, and accessible to those with only limited knowledge of mathematics. This will be an essential introductory text for all students in psychology or cognitive science taking a course on connectionism.

Connectionist Models of Development is an edited collection of essays on the current work concerning connectionist or neural network models of human development. The brain comprises millions of nerve cells that share myriad connections, and this book looks at how human development in these systems is typically characterised as adaptive changes to the strengths of these connections. The traditional accounts of connectionist learning, based on adaptive changes to weighted connections, are explored alongside the dynamic accounts in which networks generate their own structures as learning proceeds. Unlike most connectionist accounts of psychological processes which deal with the fully-mature system, this text brings to the fore a discussion of developmental processes. To investigate human cognitive and perceptual development, connectionist models of learning and representation are adopted alongside various aspects of language and knowledge acquisition. There are sections on artificial intelligence and how computer programs have been designed to mimic the development processes, as well as chapters which describe what is currently known about how real brains develop. This book is a much-needed addition to the existing literature on connectionist development as it includes up-to-date examples of research on current controversies in the field as well as new features such as genetic connectionism and biological theories of the brain. It will be invaluable to academic researchers, post-graduates and undergraduates in developmental psychology and those researching connectionist/neural networks as well as those in related fields such as psycholinguistics.

Over the last two decades, debates over the viability of commonsense psychology have been centre stage in both cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. Eliminativists have argued that advances in cognitive science and neuroscience will ultimately justify a rejection of our "folk" theory of the mind, and of its ontology. In the first half of this book Stich, who was at one time a leading advocate of eliminativism, maintains that even if the sciences develop in the ways that eliminativists foresee, none of the arguments for ontological elimination are tenable. Rather than being resolved by science, he contends, these ontological disputes will be settled by a pragmatic process in which social and political considerations have a major role to play. In later chapters, Stich argues that the widespread worry about "naturalizing" psychological properties is deeply confused, since there is no plausible account of what naturalizing requires on which the failure of the naturalization project would lead to eliminativism. He also offers a detailed analysis of the many different notions of folk psychology to be found in philosophy and psychology, and argues that simulation theory, which purports to be an alternative to folk psychology, is not supported by recent experimental findings.