Abstract
Recently some philosophers have urged that connectionist artificial intelligence is (potentially) eliminative for the propositional attitudes of folk psychology. At the same time, however, these philosophers have also insisted that since philosophy of science has failed to provide criteria distinguishing ontologically retentive from eliminative theory changes, the resulting eliminativism is not “principled”. Application of some resources developed within the semantic view of scientific theories, particularly recent formal work on the theory reduction relation, reveals these philosophers to be wrong in this second contention, yet by and large correct in the first.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Balzer, W., C. U. Moulines, and J. D. Sneed: 1987,An Architectonic for Science, Reidel, Dordrecht.
Balzer, W., D. A. Pearce, and H.-J. Schmidt: 1984,Reduction in Science, Reidel, Dordrecht.
Bickle, J.: 1992, ‘Revisionary Physicalism’,Biology & Philosophy 11(4), 411–430.
Bickle, J.: in preparation,Psychophysical Reductionism: The New Wave.
Churchland, P. M.: 1988,Matter and Consciousness, revised ed., MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Churchland, P. M.: 1989,A Neurocomputational Perspective, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Churchland, P. S.: 1986,Neurophilosophy, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Feyerabend, P.: 1977, ‘Changing Patterns of Reconstruction’,British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 28, 351–382.
Giere, R.: 1988,Explaining Science, University of Chicago Press, Chicago.
Horgan, T. and G. Graham: 1991, ‘In Defense of Southern Fundamantalism’,Philosophical Studies 62, 107–134.
Kamlah, A.: 1984, ‘A Logical Investigation of the Phlogiston Case’, in Balzer, Pearce, and Schmidt 1984, pp. 217–238.
Kuhn, T.: 1976, ‘Theory-Change as Structure-Change: Comments on the Sneed Formalism’,Erkenntnis 10, 179–199.
Mayr, D.: 1976, ‘Investigations of the Concept of Reduction I’,Erkenntnis 10, 275–294.
Mormann, T.: 1988, ‘Structuralist Reduction Concepts as Structure-Preserving Maps’,Synthese 77, 215–250.
Mormann, T.: 1991, ‘Husserl's Philosophy of Science and the Semantic Approach’,Philosophy of Science 58(1), 61–83.
Moulines, C. U.: 1984, ‘Ontological Reduction in the Natural Sciences’, in Balzer, Pearce, and Schmidt 1984, 51–70.
Nagel, E.: 1961,The Structure of Science, Harcourt, Brace, and World, New York.
Ramsey, W., S. Stich and J. Garon: 1990, ‘Connectionism, Eliminativism, and the Fate of Folk Psychology’, in J. Tomberlin (ed.),Philosophical Perspectives 4: Action Theory and Philosophy of Mind, Ridgeview Press, Atascadero, CA, pp. 499–533.
Rott, H.: 1987, ‘Reduction: Some Criteria and Criticisms of the Structuralist Concept’,Erkenntnis 27, 231–256.
Rumelhart, D. E., G.E. Hinton and J. L. McClelland: 1986, ‘A General Framework for Parallel Distributed Processing’, in D. E. Rumelhart, J. L. McClelland and the PDP Research Group (eds.),Parallel Distributed Processing, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, pp. 45–76.
Schaffner, K.: 1967, ‘Approaches to Reduction’,Philosophy of Science 34, 137–147.
Smolensky, P.: 1988, ‘On the Proper Treatment of Connectionism’,Brain & Behavioral Sciences 11, 1–23.
Sneed, J.: 1971,The Logical Structure of Mathematical Physics, Reidel, Dordrecht.
Stegmüller, W.: 1976,The Structure and Dynamics of Theories, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
Stich, S.: 1988, ‘From Connectionism to Eliminativism’,Brain & Behavioral Sciences 11, 53–54.
Stich, S.: 1989,The Fragmentation of Reason, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA.
Stich, S.: 1991, ‘Do True Believers Exist?’,Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supplementary volume65, 229–244.
Stich, S.: 1992, ‘What is a Theory of Mental Representation?’,Mind 101, 243–262.
Suppe, F.: 1974,The Structure of Scientific Theories, University of Illinois Press, Urbana IL.
Suppes, P.: 1956,Introduction to Logic, van Nostrand, Princeton.
Suppes, P.: 1967, ‘What is a Scientific Theory?’, in S. Morgenbesser (ed.),Philosophy of Science Today, Basic Books, New York.
Tienson, J.: 1988, ‘An Introduction to Connectionism’,Southern Journal of Philosophy 26, 57–84.
van Fraassen, B.: 1970, ‘On the Extension of Beth's Semantics of Physical Theories’,Philosophy of Science 37(3), 325–339.
van Fraassen, B.: 1972, ‘A Formal Approach to the Philosophy of Science’, in R. Colodny (ed.),Paradigms and Paradoxes, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh.
van Fraassen, B.: 1980,The Scientific Image, Clarendon Press, Oxford.
van Fraassen, B.: 1987, ‘The Semantic Approach to Scientific Theories’, in N. Nersessian (ed.),The Process of Science, Martinus Nijhoff, Dordrecht.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Bickle, J. Connectionism, eliminativism, and the semantic view of theories. Erkenntnis 39, 359–382 (1993). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01128508
Received:
Revised:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01128508