Connectionism in Context (Human-centred Systems)

Connectionism in Context aims to broaden and extend thedebate concerning the significance of connectionist models.The volume collects together a variety of perspectives byexperimental and developmental psychologists, philosophersand active AI researchers. These contributions relate con-nectionist ideas to historical psychlogical debates, e.g.,over behaviourism and associationism, to develop-mental and philosophical issues. The result is a volumewhich addresses both familiar, but central, topics such asthe relation between connectionism and classical AI, andless familiar, but highly challenging topics, such asconnectionism,associationism and behaviourism, the dis-tinction between perception and cognition, the role of en-vironmental structure, and the potential value ofconnec-tionism as a means of "symbol grounding". The nine essayshave been written with an interdisciplinary audience in mindand avoid both technical jargon and heavy mathematics.