The Systematicity Arguments / Edition 1

by Kenneth L. Aizawa

Overview

This book addresses a part of a problem. The problem is to determine the architecture of cognition, that is, the basic structures and mechanisms underlying cognitive processing. This is a multidimensional problem insofar as there appear to be many distinct types of mechanisms that interact in diverse ways during cognitive processing. Thus, we have memory, attention, learning, sensation, perception, and who knows what else, interacting to produce behavior. As a case in point, consider a bit of linguistic behavior. To tell a friend that I think Greg won a stunning victory, I must evidently rely on various bits of information stored in my memory, including who my friends are, who Greg is, what he won, and what natural languages I share with my friend. I must sense and perceive that my friend is within hearing distance, how loud I need to speak, how loud I am speaking, and whether my friend is paying attention. I must avail myself of what I know about the language I share with my friend, along with innumerable principles about human "folk psychology. " This book does not address the full range of contemporary theorizing about cognitive architecture, but only a part. It addresses theories of cognitive architecture that hypothesize that there exist cognitive representations, then begins to explore the possible structure of these representations. One of the leading hypotheses concerning the structure of cognitive representations is that it is akin to that found in symbolic logic.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781402072710
Publisher:	Springer US
Publication date:	11/30/2002
Series:	Studies in Brain and Mind , #1
Edition description:	2003
Pages:	255
Product dimensions:	6.10(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.02(d)

Table of Contents

1. The Structure of Cognitive Representations.- 1.1 Some Theories of Cognitive Architecture.- 1.2 An Outline for the Book.- 2. Some History and Philosophy of Science.- 2.1 Copernican and Ptolemaic Astronomy.- 2.2 Darwinian Evolution and Creationism.- 2.3 What these Arguments have in Common.- 2.4 Some Broader Implications of our Explanatory Standards.- 2.5 Taking Sk.- 3. The Productivity of Thought.- 3.1 The Productivity Argument.- 4. The Systematicity of Inference.- 4.1 What is the Systematicity of Inference?.- 4.2 The Case Against the Systematicity of Inference.- 4.3 Explaining the Systematicity of Inference.- 4.4 Taking Sk.- 5. The Systematicity of Cognitive Representations.- 5.1 What is the Systematicity of Cognitive Representations?.- 5.2 Pure Atomistic Accounts of the Systematicity of Cognitive Representations.- 5.3 Classical Accounts of the Systematicity of Cognitive Representations.- 5.4 Taking Sk.- 6. The Compositionality of Representations.- 6.1 What is the Semantic Relatedness of Thought?.- 6.2 Accounts of the Semantic Relatedness of Thought.- 6.3 A Second Argument.- 6.4 Other Co-occurrence Explananda?.- 6.5 What is Fodor and Pylyshyn’s “Real” Argument?.- 6.6 The Tracking Argument and the Arguments from Psychological Processes.- 6.7 Taking Sk.- 7. The Systematicity Arguments Applied to Connectionism.- 7.1 Chalmers’s Active-Passive Transformation Model.- 7.2 Hadley and Hayward’s Model of Strong Semantic Systematicity.- 7.3 Taking Sk.- 8. Functional Combinatorialism.- 8.1 Gödel numerals.- 8.2 Smolensky’s Tensor Product Theory.- 8.3 Taking Sk.- 9 An Alternative Cognitive Architecture.- 10. Taking the Brain Seriously.- 10.1 The Fundamental Neuropsychological Inference.- 10.2 More History of Science.- 10.3 The Inductive Risks ofNeuropsychology.- 10.4 Parallel Distributed Processing.- 10.5 The Risk of Taking the Brain Seriously.- 11. Putting Matters in Perspective.- References.

Editorial Reviews

"Aizawa makes an important contribution to the debate over whether a connectionist architecture can explain the systematicity of thought without implementing a classical architecture. His discussion blows away many pockets of unclarity in the literature on this issue."

(Brian McLaughlin, Ph.D., Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey)

From the Publisher