While working on a paper on neural computation, the following question came up: can you exert feedback control without processing information? The kind of case I have in mind is that of relatively simple feedback control devices that use one or two physical variable(s) to affect another. For instance, Watt …
As I mentioned some time ago , Andrea Scarantino and I wrote a paper on the relationships between information processing, computation, and cognition. As far as I know, it is the broadest and most systematic discussion of this topic to date. It also corrects a number of (what we consider) …
In a previous post, I briefly discussed the relationship between connectionism and associationism. Thanks in part to the helpful feedback I received, I have now revised the relevant section of the paper I am working on. I’d be interested in any additional comments or references that anyone might have. The text of the paper …
Some people, usually classicists, stress assimilate connectionism to associationism. They do have a point: “connectionism” was historically introduced and popularized by authors, such as Thorndike and Hebb, who were closely linked to associationism. But as I explain in a recent review article it seems to me that the assimilation of connectionism to …
At the recent meeting of the Pacific APA, I had an interesting conversation with a prominent philosopher of science who also does some work in cognitive science. We were talking about whether neuroscience and psychology contrain each other. I was arguing that they do. He suggested that perhaps the only …
C, R, Gallistel and A. P. King, Memory and the Computational Brain: Why Cognitive Science Will Transform Neuroscience, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009. This is a rich and thought-provoking book. I cannot do it justice in a brief post so I apologize in advance for that. Roughly speaking, the book argues that (1) many …
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