This paper has a two-fold aim. First, it reinforces a version of the "syntactic argument" given in Aizawa (1994). This argument shows that connectionist networks do not provide a means of implementing representations without rules. Horgan and Tlenson have responded to the syntactic argument in their book and in another paper (Horgan & Tlenson, 1993), but their responses do not meet the challenge posed by my formulation of the syntactic argument. My second aim is to describe a kind of cognitive (...) architecture. This architecture might be called a computational architecture, but it is not a rules and representations architecture nor the representations without rules architecture that Horgan and Tlenson wish to endorse. (shrink)

Cognitive science typically postulates unconscious mental phenomena, computational or otherwise, to explain cognitive capacities. The mental phenomena in question are supposed to be inaccessible in principle to consciousness. I try to show that this is a mistake, because all unconscious intentionality must be accessible in principle to consciousness; we have no notion of intrinsic intentionality except in terms of its accessibility to consciousness. I call this claim the The argument for it proceeds in six steps. The essential point is that (...) intrinsic intentionality has aspectual shape: Our mental representations represent the world under specific aspects, and these aspectual features are essential to a mental state's being the state that it is. (shrink)

In this paper, I define tacit knowledge as a kind of causal-explanatory structure, mirroring the derivational structure in the theory that is tacitly known. On this definition, tacit knowledge does not have to be explicitly represented. I then take the notion of a modular theory, and project the idea of modularity to several different levels of description: in particular, to the processing level and the neurophysiological level. The fundamental description of a connectionist network lies at a level between the processing (...) level and the physiological level. At this level, connectionism involves a characteristic departure from modularity, and a correlative absence of syntactic structure. This is linked to the fact that tacit knowledge descriptions of networks are only approximately true. A consequence is that strict causal systematicity in cognitive processes poses a problem for the connectionist programme. (shrink)

A competence model describes the abstract structure of a solution to some problem. or class of problems, facing the would-be intelligent system. Competence models can be quite derailed, specifying far more than merely the function to be computed. But for all that, they are pitched at some level of abstraction from the details of any particular algorithm or processing strategy which may be said to realize the competence. Indeed, it is the point and virtue of such models to specify some (...) equivalence class of algorithms/processing strategies so that the common properties highlighted by the chosen class may feature in psychologically interesting accounts. A question arises concerning the type of relation a theorist might expect to hold between such a competence model and a psychologically real processing strategy. Classical work in cognitive science expects the actual processing to depend on explicit or tacit knowledge of the competence theory. Connectionist work, for reasons to be explained, represents a departure from this norm. But the precise way in which a connectionist approach may disturb the satisfying classical symmetry of competence and processing has yet to be properly specified. A standard ?Newtonian? connectionist account, due to Paul Smolensky, is discussed and contrasted with a somewhat different ?rogue? account. A standard connectionist understanding has it that a classical competence theory describes an idealized subset of a network's behaviour. But the network's behaviour is not to be explained by its embodying explicit or tacit knowledge of the information laid out in the competence theory. A rogue model, by contrast, posits either two systems, or two aspects of a single system, such that one system does indeed embody the knowledge laid out in the competence theory. (shrink)

Terry Horgan and John Tienson have suggested that connectionism might provide a framework within which to articulate a theory of cognition according to which there are mental representations without rules (RWR) (Horgan and Tienson 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992). In essence, RWR states that cognition involves representations in a language of thought, but that these representations are not manipulated by the sort of rules that have traditionally been posited. In the development of RWR, Horgan and Tienson attempt to forestall a particular (...) line of criticism, theSyntactic Argument, which would show RWR to be inconsistent with connectionism. In essence, the argument claims that the node-level rules of connectionist networks, along with the semantic interpretations assigned to patterns of activation, serve to determine a set of representation-level rules incompatible with the RWR conception of cognition. The present paper argues that the Syntactic Argument can be made to show that RWR is inconsistent with connectionism. (shrink)

Attempts to indentify the fundamental concepts of language, argues that the study of language reveals hidden facts about the mind, and looks at the impact of propaganda.

Thinking is special. There is nothing quite like it. Thinking.

The aim of this paper is to demonstrate a _prima facie_ tension between our commonsense conception of ourselves as thinkers and the connectionist programme for modelling cognitive processes. The language of thought hypothesis plays a pivotal role. The connectionist paradigm is opposed to the language of thought; and there is an argument for the language of thought that draws on features of the commonsense scheme of thoughts, concepts, and inference. Most of the paper (Sections 3-7) is taken up with the (...) argument for the language of thought hypothesis. The argument for an opposition between connectionism and the language of thought comes towards the end (Section 8), along with some discussion of the potential eliminativist consequences (Sections 9 and. (shrink)