This series will include monographs and collections of studies devoted to the investigation and exploration of knowledge, information and data processing systems of all kinds, no matter whether human, (other) animal, or machine. Its scope is intended to span the full range of interests from classical problems in the philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology through issues in cognitive psychology and sociobiology (concerning the mental capabilities of other species) to ideas related to artificial intelligence and to computer science. While primary emphasis will be placed upon theoretical, conceptual and epistemological aspects of these problems and domains, empirical, experimental and methodological studies will also appear from time to time. One of the most, if not the most, exciting developments within cognitive science has been the emergence of connectionism as an alternative to the computational conception of the mind that tends to dominate the discipline. In this volume, John Tienson and Terence Horgan have brought together a fine collection of stimulating studies on connectionism and its significance. As the Introduction explains, the most pressing questions concern whether or not connectionism can provide a new conception of the nature of mentality. By focusing on the similarities and differences between connectionism and other approaches to cognitive science, the chapters of this book supply valuable resources that advance our understanding of these difficult issues. J.H.F.

Annotation As one of our highest expressions of thought and creativity, music has always been a difficult realm to capture, model, and understand. The connectionist paradigm, now beginning to provide insights into many realms of human behavior, offers a new and unified viewpoint from which to investigate the subtleties of musical experience. Music and Connectionism provides a fresh approach to both fields, using the techniques of connectionism and parallel distributed processing to look at a wide range of topics in music research, from pitch perception to chord fingering to composition.The contributors, leading researchers in both music psychology and neural networks, address the challenges and opportunities of musical applications of network models. The result is a current and thorough survey of the field that advances understanding of musical phenomena encompassing perception, cognition, composition, and performance, and in methods for network design and analysis.Peter M. Todd is a doctoral candidate in the PDP Research Group of the Psychology Department at Stanford University. Gareth Loy is an award-winning composer, a lecturer in the Music Department of the University of California, San Diego, and a member of the technical staff of Frox Inc.Contributors. Jamshed J. Bharucha. Peter Desain. Mark Dolson. Robert Gjerclingen. Henkjan Honing. B. Keith Jenkins. Jacqueline Jons. Douglas H. Keefe. Tuevo Kohonen. Bernice Laden. Pauli Laine. Otto Laske. Marc Leman. J. P. Lewis. Christoph Lischka. D. Gareth Loy. Ben Miller. Michael Mozer. Samir I. Sayegh. Hajime Sano. Todd Soukup. Don Scarborough. Kalev Tiits. Peter M. Todd. Kari Torkkola.

The rapid growth of neural network research has led to a major reappraisal of many fundamental assumptions in cognitive and perceptual psychology. This text—aimed at the advanced undergraduate and beginning postgraduate student—is an in-depth guide to those aspects of neural network research that are of direct relevance to human information processing. Examples of new connectionist models of learning, vision, language and thought are described in detail. Both neurological and psychological considerations are used in assessing its theoretical contributions. The status of the basic predicates like exclusive-OR is examined, the limitations of perceptrons are explained and properties of multi-layer networks are described in terms of many examples of psychological processes. The history of neural networks is discussed from a psychological perspective which examines why certain issues have become important. The book ends with a general critique of the new connectionist approach. It is clear that new connectionism work provides a distinctive framework for thinking about central questions in cognition and perception. This new textbook provides a clear and useful introduction to its theories and applications.

An evaluation of the merits, potential, and limits of Connectionism, this book also illustrates current research programs and recent trends.Connectionism (also known as Neural Networks) is an exciting new field which has brought together researchers from different areas such as artificial intelligence, computer science, cognitive science, neuroscience, physics, and complex dynamics. These researchers are applying the connectionist paradigm in an interdisciplinary way to the analysis and design of intelligent systems.In this book, researchers from the above-mentioned fields not only report on their most recent research results, but also describe Connectionism from the perspective of their own field, looking at issues such as: - the effects and the utility of Connectionism for their field - the potential and limitations of Connectionism - can it be combined with other approaches?

Based on the author's thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California at Berkeley.

Connectionism and the Mind provides a clear and balanced introduction to connectionist networks and explores theoretical and philosophical implications. Much of this discussion from the first edition has been updated, and three new chapters have been added on the relation of connectionism to recent work on dynamical systems theory, artificial life, and cognitive neuroscience. Read two of the sample chapters on line: Connectionism and the Dynamical Approach to Cognition: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/bechtel.pdf Networks, Robots, and Artificial Life: http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/pdf/bechtel2.pdf

Christof Teuscher revives, analyzes, and simulates Turing's ideas, applying them to different types of problems, and building and training Turing's machines using evolutionary algorithms. In a little known paper entitled 'Intelligent Machinery' Turing investigated connectionist networks, but his work was dismissed as a 'schoolboy essay'and it was left unpublished until 1968, 14 years after his death. This is not a book about today's (classical) neural networks, but about the neuron network-like structures proposed by Turing. One of its novel features is that it actually goes beyond Turing's ideas by proposing new machines. The book also contains a Foreward by B. Jack Copeland and D. Proudfoot.