Steven Pinker -- How the Mind Works - Hampshire High Italian ...

114 | HOW THE MIND WORKSity. The distributed input representation, in which a concept does not getits own unit ("parrot") but is represented by a pattern of activity overunits for its properties ("feathered," "winged," and so on), allows for automaticgeneralization to similar concepts and thus nicely fits thie law ofassociation by resemblance. And if all parts of the mind start off as thesame kind of network, we have an implementation of the blank slate.Connectionism thus offers an opportunity. In seeing what simple neuralnetworkmodels can and cannot do, we can put the centuries-old doctrineof the association of ideas to a rigorous test.Before we begin, we need to set aside some red herrings. Connectionismis not an alternative to the computational theory of mind, but a varietyof it, which claims that the main kind of information processing doneby the mind is multivariate statistics. Connectionism is not a necessarycorrective to the theory that the mind is like a commercial computer, witha high-speed, error-free, serial central processing unit; no one holds thattheory. And there is no real-life Achilles who claims that every form ofthinking consists of cranking through thousands of rules from a logic textbook.Finally, connectionist networks are not particularly realistic modelsof the brain, despite the hopeful label "neural networks." For example, the"synapse" (connection weight) can switch from excitatory to inhibitory,and information can flow in both directions along an "axon" (connection),both anatomically impossible. When there is a choice between getting ajob done and mirroring the brain, connectionists often opt for getting thejob done; that shows that the networks are used as a form of artificialintelligence based loosely on the metaphor of neurons, and are not a formof neural modeling. The question is, do they perform the right kinds ofcomputations to model the workings of human thought?Raw connectoplasm has trouble with five feats of everyday thinking.The feats appear to be subtle at first, and were not even suspected ofexisting until logicians, linguists, and computer scientists begaft to putthe meanings of sentences under a microscope. But the fdats givehuman thought its distinctive precision and power and are, I think, animportant part of the answer to the question, How does the mind work?One feat is entertaining the concept of an individual. Let's go back tothe first departure of neural networks from computerlike representa-