Connectionism, Systematicity, and the Frame Problem

  • Authors:
  • W. F. G. Haselager;J. F. H. Van Rappard

  • Affiliations:
  • Dr. W.F.G. Haselager & Prof. Dr. J.F.H. van Rappard Theoretical Psychology Department, Amsterdam / Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1111, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands (e-mail WFG. Email: ...;Dr. W.F.G. Haselager & Prof. Dr. J.F.H. van Rappard Theoretical Psychology Department, Amsterdam / Vrije Universiteit, De Boelelaan 1111, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands (e-mail WFG. Email: ...

  • Venue:
  • Minds and Machines
  • Year:
  • 1998

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

This paper investigates connectionism‘s potential to solve the frameproblem. The frame problem arises in the context of modelling the humanability to see the relevant consequences of events in a situation. It hasbeen claimed to be unsolvable for classical cognitive science, but easilymanageable for connectionism. We will focus on a representational approachto the frame problem which advocates the use of intrinsic representations.We argue that although connectionism‘s distributed representations may lookpromising from this perspective, doubts can be raised about the potential ofdistributed representations to allow large amounts of complexly structuredinformation to be adequately encoded and processed. It isquestionable whether connectionist models that are claimed to effectivelyrepresent structured information can be scaled up to a realistic extent. Weconclude that the frame problem provides a difficulty to connectionism thatis no less serious than the obstacle it constitutes for classical cognitive science.