Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

On the other hand, the functional nature of the connectionist architecture
has resulted in its biological status being questioned or challenged. There are
many important differences between biological and artificial neural networks
(Crick & Asanuma, 1986; Douglas & Martin, 1991; McCloskey, 1991). There is very
little biological evidence in support of important connectionist learning rules such
as backpropagation of error (Mazzoni, Andersen, & Jordan, 1991; O’Reilly, 1996;
Shimansky, 2009). Douglas and Martin (1991, p. 292) dismissed artificial neural networks
as merely being “stick and ball models.” Thus whether connectionist cognitive
science is a biologically plausible alternative to classical cognitive science remains
an open issue.
That connectionist cognitive science has established itself as a reaction against
classical cognitive science cannot be denied. However, as we have seen in this section,
it is not completely clear that connectionism represents a radical alternative
to the classical approach (Schneider, 1987), or that it is rather much more closely
related to classical cognitive science than a brief glance at some of the literature
might suggest (Dawson, 1998). It is certainly the case that connectionist cognitive
science has provided important criticisms of the classical approach and has therefore
been an important contributor to theory of mind.
Interestingly, many of the criticisms that have been highlighted by connectionist
cognitive science—slowness, brittleness, biological implausibility, overemphasis
of logicism and disembodiment—have been echoed by a third school, embodied
cognitive science. Furthermore, related criticisms have been applied by embodied
cognitive scientists against connectionist cognitive science. Not surprisingly, then,
embodied cognitive science has generated a very different approach to deal with
these issues than has connectionist cognitive science.
In Chapter 5 we turn to the elements of this third “flavour” of cognitive science.
As has been noted in this final section of Chapter 4, there appears to be ample
room for finding relationships between connectionism and classicism such that
the umbrella cognitive science can be aptly applied to both. We see that embodied
cognitive science poses some interesting and radical challenges, and that its existence
calls many of the core features shared by connectionism and classicism into
question.
Elements of Connectionist Cognitive Science 203