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Program Execution in Connectionist Networks
Author(s) -
Roth Martin
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
mind and language
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.905
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1468-0017
pISSN - 0268-1064
DOI - 10.1111/j.0268-1064.2005.00295.x
Subject(s) - connectionism , computer science , counterfactual thinking , argument (complex analysis) , cognitive architecture , cognitive science , cognition , artificial intelligence , programming language , theoretical computer science , artificial neural network , psychology , social psychology , biochemistry , chemistry , neuroscience
Recently, connectionist models have been developed that seem to exhibit structure‐sensitive cognitive capacities without executing a program. This paper examines one such model and argues that it does execute a program. The argument proceeds by showing that what is essential to running a program is preserving the functional structure of the program. It has generally been assumed that this can only be done by systems possessing a certain temporal‐causal organization. However, counterfactual‐preserving functional architecture can be instantiated in other ways, for example geometrically, which are realizable by connectionist networks.