Untimed and Misrepresented: Connectionism and the Computer Metaphor Untimed and Misrepresented: Connectionism and the Computer Metaphor
نویسنده
چکیده
The computer metaphor for the mind or brain has long outlived its usefulness, being based on Cartesian ideas. Connectionism has not broken free from this metaphor, and this has stunted the directions connectionist research has taken. The subordinate role of timing in computations has resulted in networks with real-value timelags on signals passing between nodes being ignored. The notion of representation in connectionism is generally confused; this can be clariied when at all times it is made explicit who or what Q and S are in the formula \P is used by Q to represent R to S". Frequently they may be layers or modules within a network, but the typical confusion is symptomatic of the computer metaphor which in practice favours feedforward and militates against arbitrarily connected networks. Rejecting this metaphor, an alternative paradigm is suggested of a brain as a complex dynamical system; investigating the dynamics of arbitrarily connected networks with real-valued timelags, speciied so as to produce appropriate behaviour when they act as a nervous system for an organism or machine in continuous longterm interaction with its environment. The practical diierences a change of metaphor makes are pointed out, and possible techniques for pursuing this line are indicated.
منابع مشابه
In Mark Johnson (Ed.), Brain development and cognition: A reader (2nd ed.). Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2002. CONNECTIONISM AND THE STUDY OF CHANGE
Developmental psychology and developmental neuropsychology have traditionally focused on the study of children. But these two fields are also supposed to be about the study of change, i.e. changes in behavior, changes in the neural structures that underlie behavior, and changes in the relationship between mind and brain across the course of development. Ironically, there has been relatively lit...
متن کاملMoving beyond Metaphors: Understanding the Mind for What It Is
In the last 50 years, there have been three major approaches to understanding cognitive systems and theorizing about the nature of the mind: symbolicism, connectionism, and dynamicism. Each of these approaches has relied heavily on a preferred metaphor for understanding the mind/brain. Most famously, symbolicism, or classical cognitive science, relies on the “mind as computer” metaphor. Under t...
متن کاملFrom Embodiment to Metaphor: A Study on Social Cognitive Development and Conceptual Metaphor in Persian-Speaking Children
This study explores the metaphoric comprehension of normal Persian-speaking children, as well as theories of cognitive development and cultural and social impacts. The researchers discuss the improvement of the understanding of ontological conceptual metaphors through age growth and cognitive development, and how it helps to expand children’s thoughts and knowledge of the world. In this study, ...
متن کاملCancer as a Metaphor
Introduction: Cognitive linguists believe that metaphor is a cognitive phenomenon, and that what appears in language is just the aspect of cognitive phenomenon Metaphor is one of the basic interdisciplinary concepts that has been paid more attention to its fundamental role in various aspects of psychology, medicine, including cancer in recent years. Methods:. From the point of view of cognitiv...
متن کاملA connectionist account of the emergence of the literal- metaphorical-anomalous distinction in young children
We present the first developmental computational model of metaphor comprehension, which seeks to relate the emergence of a distinction between literal and non-literal similarity in young children to the development of semantic representations. The model gradually learns to distinguish literal from metaphorical semantic juxtapositions as it acquires more knowledge about the vehicle domain. In ac...
متن کامل