The purpose of the paper is to present basic principles of connectionism and its position within contemporary cognitive science. Connectionist paradigm postulates thinking as a parallel processing of non-structured information by simple calculations performed by neurons that are deeply mutually interconnected. The basic numerical tools of connectionism are represented by so-called artificial neural networks, which are immediately applicable to the study of many cognitive functions at different l…
Read moreThe purpose of the paper is to present basic principles of connectionism and its position within contemporary cognitive science. Connectionist paradigm postulates thinking as a parallel processing of non-structured information by simple calculations performed by neurons that are deeply mutually interconnected. The basic numerical tools of connectionism are represented by so-called artificial neural networks, which are immediately applicable to the study of many cognitive functions at different levels of complexity and sophistication. Connectionism has brought with it a number of important philosophical issues and concerns. Connectionism as a dramatic shift from more traditional accounts of cognition has forced philosophers to reconsider many assumptions based upon earlier theories