title: Are feedforward and recurrent networks systematic? Analysis and implications for a connectionist cognitive architecture
creator: Phillips, S.
subject: Cognitive Psychology
subject: Neural Nets
subject: Philosophy of Mind
description: Human cognition is said to be systematic: cognitive ability generalizes to structurally related behaviours. The connectionist approach to cognitive theorizing has been strongly criticized for its failure to explain systematicity. Demonstrations of generalization notwithstanding, I show that two widely used networks (feedforward and recurrent) do not support systematicity under the condition of local input/output representations. For a connectionist explanation of systematicity, these results leave two choices, either: (1) develop models capable of systematicity under local input/output representations; or (2) justify the choice of similarity-based (nonlocal) component representations sufficient for systematicity.
date: 1998
type: Journal (Paginated)
type: PeerReviewed
format: application/postscript
identifier: http://cogprints.org/520/2/systemffn-rn.ps
identifier:   Phillips, S.  (1998) Are feedforward and recurrent networks systematic? Analysis and implications for a connectionist cognitive architecture.  [Journal (Paginated)]     
relation: http://cogprints.org/520/