Levels of description and explanation in cognitive science

Minds and Machines 4 (1):1-25 (1994)
Abstract   The notion of levels has been widely used in discussions of cognitive science, especially in discussions of the relation of connectionism to symbolic modeling of cognition. I argue that many of the notions of levels employed are problematic for this purpose, and develop an alternative notion grounded in the framework of mechanistic explanation. By considering the source of the analogies underlying both symbolic modeling and connectionist modeling, I argue that neither is likely to provide an adequate analysis of processes at the level at which cognitive theories attempt to function: One is drawn from too low a level, the other from too high a level. If there is a distinctly cognitive level, then we still need to determine what are the basic organizational principles at that level
Keywords Cognitive Science  Connectionism  Mechanism  Psychology  Science
Categories
Options
 Save to my reading list
Follow the author(s)
My bibliography
Export citation
Find it on Scholar
Edit this record
Mark as duplicate
Revision history Request removal from index
 
Download options
PhilPapers Archive


Upload a copy of this paper     Check publisher's policy on self-archival     Papers currently archived: 5,679
External links
  • Through your library Configure

    Similar books and articles

    Analytics

    Monthly downloads

    Added to index

    2009-01-28

    Total downloads

    163 ( #2,105 of 549,087 )

    Recent downloads (6 months)

    2 ( #37,333 of 549,087 )

    How can I increase my downloads?


    My notes
    Sign in to use this feature


    Discussion
    Start a new thread
    Order:
    There  are no threads in this forum
    Nothing in this forum yet.

    Other forums