David E. Rumelhart

James L. McClelland

What makes people smarter than computers? These volumes by a pioneering neurocomputing group suggest that the answer lies in the massively parallel architecture of the human mind. They describe a new theory of cognition called connectionism that is challenging the idea of symbolic computation that has traditionally been at the center of debate in theoretical discussions about the mind. The authors' theory assumes the mind is composed of a great number of elementary units connected in a neural network. Mental processes are interactions between these units which excite and inhibit each other in parallel rather than sequential operations. In this context, knowledge can no longer be thought of as stored in localized structures; instead, it consists of the connections between pairs of units that are distributed throughout the network. Volume 1 lays the foundations of this exciting theory of parallel distributed processing, while Volume 2 applies it to a number of specific issues in cognitive science and neuroscience, with chapters describing models of aspects of perception, memory, language, and thought.

Psychological and Biological Models

Donald A. Norman

Theory; Linguistic analysis; The computer model; Studies of language; Studies of visual perceptioon and problem solving; Extensions.

Explorations in Cognition

James L. Mcclelland

PDP Research Group

Explorations in the Microstructure of Cognition: Foundations

Parallel Distributed Processing, Volume 1

Parallell Distributed Processing: Foundations; Volume 2: Psychological and Biological Models

Stephen P. Stich

William Ramsey

The philosophy of cognitive science has recently become one of the most exciting and fastest growing domains of philosophical inquiry and analysis. Until the early 1980s, nearly all of the models developed treated cognitive processes -- like problem solving, language comprehension, memory, and higher visual processing -- as rule-governed symbol manipulation. However, this situation has changed dramatically over the last half dozen years. In that period there has been an enormous shift of attention toward connectionist models of cognition that are inspired by the network-like architecture of the brain. Because of their unique architecture and style of processing, connectionist systems are generally regarded as radically different from the more traditional symbol manipulation models. This collection was designed to provide philosophers who have been working in the area of cognitive science with a forum for expressing their views on these recent developments. Because the symbol-manipulating paradigm has been so important to the work of contemporary philosophers, many have watched the emergence of connectionism with considerable interest. The contributors take very different stands toward connectionism, but all agree that the potential exists for a radical shift in the way many philosophers think of various aspects of cognition. Exploring this potential and other philosophical dimensions of connectionist research is the aim of this volume.

Philosophy and Connectionist Theory

Yves Chauvin (Ph. D.)

Composed of three sections, this book presents the most popular training algorithm for neural networks: backpropagation. The first section presents the theory and principles behind backpropagation as seen from different perspectives such as statistics, machine learning, and dynamical systems. The second presents a number of network architectures that may be designed to match the general concepts of Parallel Distributed Processing with backpropagation learning. Finally, the third section shows how these principles can be applied to a number of different fields related to the cognitive sciences, including control, speech recognition, robotics, image processing, and cognitive psychology. The volume is designed to provide both a solid theoretical foundation and a set of examples that show the versatility of the concepts. Useful to experts in the field, it should also be most helpful to students seeking to understand the basic principles of connectionist learning and to engineers wanting to add neural networks in general -- and backpropagation in particular -- to their set of problem-solving methods.

Theory, Architectures, and Applications

Backpropagation

Yves Chauvin

David E. Rumelhart

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