Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!sunybcs!dmark
From: dmark@cs.Buffalo.EDU (David Mark)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Connectionism, a paradigm shift?
Message-ID: <9028@cs.Buffalo.EDU>
Date: 5 Aug 89 12:54:24 GMT
References: <24241@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu>
Reply-To: dmark@sunybcs.UUCP (David Mark)
Organization: SUNY/Buffalo Geography
Lines: 28

In article <24241@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> dave@cogsci.indiana.edu (David Chalmers) writes:
>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.

I agree that it does look like a paradigm shift, since it is a radically new
way to look at some problems.

I have not yet become very interested in connectionist models, because, as
a scientist rather than an engineer, I am interested primarily in seeking
_explanation_ rather than _performance_.  There is little doubt that NN programs
based on the connectionist paradigm perform some computing tasks very well,
including some (many) tasks of an AI/ES flavor.  But, I am not aware of a
lot of success in understanding what the weights _MEAN_, except for some
specialized fields such as low-level vision work, in which we also have
neurophysiological evidence.  Now, I only read a small proportion of the
NN/connectionist work, so I wonder if _explanations_ using NN/C have become 
more eveident in the last year or two.  If not, I'm not interested, and
assume that the "old" paradigm will remain quite healthy in the sciences at
least.

(Just my underinformed opinions, obviously not necessarily those of my
colleagues!)

David Mark
dmark@cs.buffalo.edu