Systematicity redux

Abstract

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.

Categorial Compositionality III: F-(co)algebras and the Systematicity of Recursive Capacities in Human Cognition

“…Such cases are generally not regarded as evidence against the systematicity property–human cognition is ceteris paribus (e.g., memory requirements being the same) largely systematic (see [2]). Nonetheless, a more complete theory will address both aspects of cognition.…”

The systematicity challenge to anti-representational dynamicism

“…This turns out to be not a very easy task. The reason is that representation-free characterizations of systematicity are, if not utterly absent, quite unusual in the literature: the paradigm cases of systematicity phenomena are linguistic or conceptual cases, that is to say, cases that very obviously fit the representational scheme (see e.g., Fodor 1987;Fodor and Pylyshyn 1988;McLaughlin 1993McLaughlin , 2009. Some authors would even suggest that systematicity should be stated in terms of "abilities to have mental representations with propositional contents" (McLaughlin 2009, p. 254).…”

“…Since Fodor and Pylyshyn's seminal paper (1988), the dialectics surrounding systematicity may make it seem that we are, as it were, stuck in a closed loop. 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).…”

“…3 Though we lack a ready-made statement of the implementation relation, in this paper I follow standard practice in the literature (e.g., Fodor and Pylyshyn 1988;Fodor and McLaughlin 1990;Marcus 2001;McLaughlin 2009) in considering implementation as (a) a relation between (categories or processes at) higher levels and (categories or processes at) lower levels of explanation (b) which is asymmetrical (if A implements B, then B does not implement A), one-many (A 1 , A 2 , . .…”

Neuro-cognitive organization as a side-effect of the evolution of learning ability

“…[2][3] [4]). However, unlike models that impose organization upfront, neural nets can be excellent tools for studying the emergence of cognitive organization [5], since they allow a large variation in degree of organization.…”