• Asia-pacific Journal of Multimedia Services Convergent with Art, Humanities, and Sociology
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• v.9 no.8
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• pp.783-790
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• 2019

Cognitive science attempts to explain human intelligence on the basis of success of artificial neural network, which is called connectionism. The neural network, e.g., deep learning, seemingly promises connectionism to go beyond what it is. But those(Fodor & Pylyshyn, Fodor, & McLaughlin) who advocate classical computationalism, or symbolism claim that connectionism must fail since it cannot represent the relation between human thoughts and human language. The neural network lacks systematicity, so any output of neural network is at best association or accidental combination of data plugged in input units. In this paper, I first introduce structure of artificial neural network and what connectionism amounts to. Second, I shed light on the problem of systematicity the classical computationalists pose for the connectionists. Third, I briefly introduce how those who advocate connectionism respond to the criticism while noticing Smolensky's theory of vector product. Finally, I examine the debate of computationalism and connectionism on systematicity, and show how the problem of systematicity contributes to the development of connectionism and computationalism both.