Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!iuvax!cogsci!dave
From: dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Connectionism, a paradigm shift?
Message-ID: <24241@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Date: 3 Aug 89 23:40:44 GMT
Sender: root@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu
Reply-To: dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers)
Organization: Indiana University, Bloomington
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Almost half the papers at this month's upcoming Cognitive Science conference
are about connectionism!  For a field which just 3-4 years ago was very
small and the "radical new kid on the block," this is an amazing growth.  Of
course, there has been much talk of a "paradigm shift."  But paradigm shifts
were never meant to happen this fast.  The electronic age seems to accelerate
everything (remember cold fusion?).  There's no chance for a slow, graceful
growth in the field; the bandwagon has arrived and it's moving fast, jump on 
before it's too late!

This unnatural acceleration has got to lead to unstable, unpredictable
consequences.  There seems to be already almost as much valueless work in
connectionism as there was in "traditional AI" (tweak this, try that, apply
here, generalize there, and quickly, before somebody else does!).  
Prediction: within a year or two an "anti-connectionist" backlash will be 
growing very prominent.  (There are already a few signs.)  After all the 
hype, people will begin to grumble "come on, they're just smart pattern 
recognizers/associators.  Can they really do _cognition_?"  In this 
accelerated age, these views will quickly become conventional wisdom, and 
many will jump off the bandwagon as quickly as they jumped on.

Meantime, in the background people will keep plugging away, doing
good connectionist work at the slow and steady pace that good science
seems to require.  My prediction: in the wash, connectionism (along
with other "emergent" approaches) will emerge as the dominant and most
successful paradigm, but not for another decade yet, and not before
another couple of violent swings in various directions.  Comments?

--
Dave Chalmers     (dave@cogsci.indiana.edu)      
Concepts and Cognition, Indiana University.
"Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must make it all up."