• Korean Journal of Cognitive Science
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.133-164
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• 2012

Paul Churchland(1989) suggests the theory of representation from the results of cognitive biology and connectionist AI studies. According to the theory, our representations of the diverse phenomena in the world can be represented as the positions of phase state spaces with the actions of the neurons or of the assembly of neurons. He insists connectionist AI neural networks can have the semantical category systems to recognize the world. But Fodor and Lepore(1996) don't look the perspective bright. From their points of view, the Churchland's theory of representation stands on the base of Quine's holism, and the network semantics cannot explain how the criteria of semantical content similarity could be possible, and so cannot the theory. This thesis aims to excavate which one is the better between the perspective of the theory and the one of Fodor and Lepore's. From my understandings of state space theory of representation, artificial nets can coordinates the criteria of contents similarity by the learning algorithm. On the basis of these, I can see that Fodor and Lepore's points cannot penetrate the Churchlands' theory. From the view point of the theory, we can see how the future's artificial systems can have the conceptual systems recognizing the world. Therefore we can have the perspectives what cognitive scientists have to focus on.