Quantification without variables in connectionism

Minds and Machines 6 (2):173-201 (1996)
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Abstract

  Connectionist attention to variables has been too restricted in two ways. First, it has not exploited certain ways of doing without variables in the symbolic arena. One variable-avoidance method, that of logical combinators, is particularly well established there. Secondly, the attention has been largely restricted to variables in long-term rules embodied in connection weight patterns. However, short-lived bodies of information, such as sentence interpretations or inference products, may involve quantification. Therefore short-lived activation patterns may need to achieve the effect of variables. The paper is mainly a theoretical analysis of some benefits and drawbacks of using logical combinators to avoid variables in short-lived connectionist encodings without loss of expressive power. The paper also includes a brief survey of some possible methods for avoiding variables other than by using combinators

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2009-01-28

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John A Barnden
University of Birmingham

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References found in this work

On the proper treatment of connectionism.Paul Smolensky - 1988 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 11 (1):1-23.
Combinatory logic.Haskell Brooks Curry - 1958 - Amsterdam,: North-Holland Pub. Co..
Recursive distributed representations.Jordan B. Pollack - 1990 - Artificial Intelligence 46 (1-2):77-105.

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