Re: [ontolog-forum] Fruit fly emotions mimic human emotions - ontology d

[Thomas Johnston <tmj44p@xxxxxxx>]

<<<

Tom,

The connective 'vs' is inappropriate in such discussions:

> mental representation vs. connectionism.

There is no logical reason why there should be any conflict between
those studies.  There are neurons in the brain with strong
interconnections.  Infants are predisposed to learn languages
at an early stage.  The evidence for mental models is very
strong.  People often reason in fuzzy ways.  But they also
reason in very precise and crisp ways.

Any theory that cannot explain all those phenomena (plus
many more that would fill volumes to enumerate) is inadequate.
As neuroscientists emphasize, nobody knows how the brain works,
and it is a serious *blunder* to exclude any phenomena.

>>>

John,

I am quite well aware of the clusters of evidence you allude to, which any theory of mind should address.

But, as you must surely be aware, your “should”, as plausible as it is, remains to be cashed in. By comparison, my “vs”, as referring to ongoing debates in current cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and related fields, is well-supported.

Representationalists, especially Fodor and friends, emphasize that the production and comprehension of sentences depends on (i) the recursive nature of syntax and our ability to map recursive structures into and out of linear spoken and written strings, and (ii) the compositional nature of semantics and our ability to recognize the contribution which each (non-syncategorematic) component of a sentence makes to the meaning of that sentence. Finally, it is our ability to manage syntactic recursion and semantic compositionality that explains the productivity of linguistic behavior. Or so things go in the Language of Thought camp.

I myself would include linguistic productivity in any short list of phenomena which any theory of language and mind must address, and so would add it to your short list above.

But in my “vs.” comment, I was specifically discussing Gardenfors' theory of conceptual spaces, which he himself presents as a possible reconciliation between two theories which are currently in strong opposition to one another. (I certainly did not intend to suggest, with my “vs.”, that there is nothing more to current issues in cognitive science, and philosophy of mind and language, other than this specific debate.)

Here's Gardenfors, on my "vs.":

“Within cognitive science, there are currently two dominating approaches to the problem of modeling representations.” From the point of view of the symbolic approach (which I and others call the “mental representation” approach), “cognition is seen as essentially being computation, involving symbol manipulation.” A “special case” of the second approach is connectionism, which “models associations using artificial neural networks.” These two approaches “are often presented as competing paradigms...”. (Conceptual Spaces, p.1)

This is the “vs.” I am referring to, and in spite of your “should”, the facts on the current ground is that their is this debate. Indeed, the article by Fodor and Lepore and the reply by David Chalmers, both of which you recently provided links to, make it quite clear how intense the “vs.” remains.

So when you wrote:

<<<

The connective 'vs' is inappropriate in such discussions:

>>>

have I misunderstood you?

Tom

On Sunday, May 24, 2015 10:05 PM, John F Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Tom,

The connective 'vs' is inappropriate in such discussions:

> mental representation vs. connectionism.

There is no logical reason why there should be any conflict between
those studies.  There are neurons in the brain with strong
interconnections.  Infants are predisposed to learn languages
at an early stage.  The evidence for mental models is very
strong.  People often reason in fuzzy ways.  But they also
reason in very precise and crisp ways.

Any theory that cannot explain all those phenomena (plus
many more that would fill volumes to enumerate) is inadequate.
As neuroscientists emphasize, nobody knows how the brain works,
and it is a serious *blunder* to exclude any phenomena.

John

_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J

_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J    (01)