Connectionism, Analogicity and Mental Content

In Connectionism and the Philosophy of Psychology, Horgan and Tienson (1996) argue that cognitive\nprocesses, pace classicism, are not governed by exceptionless, “representation-level” rules; they\nare instead the work of defeasible cognitive tendencies subserved by the non-linear dynamics of\nthe brain’s neural networks. Many theorists are sympathetic with the dynamical characterisation\nof connectionism and the general (re)conception of cognition that it affords. But in all the\nexcitement surrounding the connectionist revolution in cognitive science, it has largely gone\nunnoticed that connectionism adds to the traditional focus on computational processes, a new\nfocus – one on the vehicles of mental representation, on the entities that carry content through the\nmind. Indeed, if Horgan and Tienson’s dynamical characterisation of connectionism is on the\nright track, then so intimate is the relationship between computational processes and\nrepresentational vehicles, that connectionist cognitive science is committed to a resemblance\ntheory of mental content.