Page 123 - Contribution To Phenomenology

116 TOMNENON

trying to make the case here that there is anything more paradigmaticaUy
"phenomenological" about Husserl than other figures, several of whom
(e.g., Schiitz, Gurwitsch, or Merleau-Ponty) might provide even more
fruitful points of intersection with Connectionism than Husserl's work
does. I should also state explicitly that the picture I will be painting will
be set out in very broad strokes, sometimes resulting very consciously in
more of a caricature (though I hope a not completely misleading one)
of Husserl and his positions than a precise and detailed portrait, since my
intentions in this paper are directed more toward a few systematic issues
than to the interpretation of certain texts or doctrines.

I

Accordingly, I would like to proceed by taking the notion of Phenome-
nology for granted for a moment and turning to Connectionism. What is
Connectionism and when did it emerge? According to a few of the more
philosophically oriented writers on Connectionism/ it is described as a
"new approach" that has emerged within the interdisciplinary enterprise
known as "cognitive science." Ironically, this new approach calls into
question some of the most basic assumptions that constituted this
interdisciplinary field in the first place. For what originally brought
together researchers from such diverse fields as computer science,
neurology, mathematics, psychology, linguistics, and philosophy were two
assumptions: first of all, the view that the computer provides a useful or
perhaps even the best model for how to think of intelligence or cognition
in general, and consequently of human cognition in particular; and
secondly, the assumption that by computers one means things like the
kinds of machines that had become predominant by the middle of the
50's and prevail up until today—high-powered calculators that operate

^ See here, for instance, William Bechtel and Adele Abrahamsen, Connectionism
and the Mind: An Introduction to Parallel Processing in Networks (Cambridge, Mass. and
London: Basil Blackwell, 1991); John Tienson's Introduction and William Bechtel's survey
of connectionism in: Terence Horgan and John Tienson (edd.), "Connectionism and the
Philosophy of Mind," Southern Journal of Philosophy, 26 (1988) Spindel Conference
Supplementary Issue; and Teinson's Introduction along with the revised version of
Bechtel's paper in: Tienson and Horgan (edd.), Connectionism and the Philosophy of Mind
(Dordrecht/Boston/London: Kluwer, 1991). For an overview of the current philosophical
debate on Connectionism, see in addition to these three volumes: William Ramsey,
Stephen Stich, and David Rumelhart (edd.) Philosophy and Connectionist Theory
(Hillsdale: Erlbaum, 1991).