Systematicity and the Cognition of Structured Domains

One of the main challenges that Jerry Fodor and Zenon Pylyshyn (Cognition 28:3-71, 1988) posed for any connectionist theory of cognitive architecture is to explain the systematicity of thought without implementing a Language of Thought (LOT) architecture. The systematicity challenge presents a dilemma: if connectionism cannot explain the systematicity of thought, then it fails to offer an adequate theory of cognitive architecture; and if it explains the systematicity of thought by implementing a LOT architecture, then it fails to offer an alternative to the LOT hypothesis. Given that thought is systematic, connectionism can offer an adequate alternative to the LOT hypothesis only if it can meet the challenge. Although some critics tried to meet the challenge, others argued that it need not be met since thought is not in fact systematic; and some claimed not to even understand the claim that thought is systematic. I do not here examine attempts to answer the challenge. Instead, I defend the challenge itself by explicating the notion of systematicity in a way that I hope makes clear that thought is indeed systematic, and so that to offer an adequate alternative to the LOT hypothesis, connectionism must meet the challenge.

Section: Cummins Raises a Worry About (T2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Cummins Raises a Worry About (T2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Cummins Raises a Worry About (T2)mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Systematicity redux

McLaughlin

2009

“…SeeDretske (1981) for a non-standard account, and for a closely related discussion seeCummins (1996) andCummins et al (2001).…”

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confidence: 99%

Analog representations and their users

Katz

2015

Characterizing different kinds of representation is of fundamental importance to cognitive science, and one traditional way of doing so is in terms of the analog-digital distinction. Indeed the distinction is often appealed to in ways both narrow and broad. In this paper I argue that the analog-digital distinction does not apply to representational schemes but only to representational systems, where a representational system is constituted by a representational scheme and its user, and that whether a representational system is analog or non-analog depends on facts about that user. This aspect of the distinction has gone unnoticed, and I argue that the failure to notice it can be an impediment to scientific progress.

“…On the one hand, supporters of classical schemes of mental representation have emphasized again and again the need of a compositional system of symbols in the account of systematicity phenomena (e.g., Fodor and McLaughlin 1990;McLaughlin 1993McLaughlin , 2009García-Carpintero 1995;Aydede 1997;Fodor 1997;Hadley 2004). On the other hand, proponents of connectionist sub-symbolic schemes of mental representation have tried to respond to the different challenges posed by classicists in a variety of ways (e.g., Van Gelder 1990;Smolensky 1990;Smolensky et al 1992;Matthews 1994;Cummins 1996;Cummins et al 2001) (see Aizawa 2003 for detailed discussion).…”

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confidence: 99%

The systematicity challenge to anti-representational dynamicism

Verdejo

2014

After more than twenty years of representational debate in the cognitive sciences, anti-representational dynamicism may be seen as offering a rival and radically new kind of explanation of systematicity phenomena. In this paper, I argue that, on the contrary, anti-representational dynamicism must face a version of the old systematicity challenge: either it does not explain systematicity, or else, it is just an implementation of representational theories. To show this, I present a purely behavioral and representation-free account of systematicity. I then consider a case of insect sensorimotor systematic behavior: communicating behavior in honey bees. I conclude that anti-representational dynamicism fails to capture the fundamental trait of systematic behaviors qua systematic, i.e., their involving exercises of the same behavioral capacities. I suggest, finally, a collaborative strategy in pursuit of a rich and powerful account of this central phenomenon of high cognition at all levels of explanation, including the representational level.