Page 395 - Deep Learning

378 Conclusion

such a detailed map of a person’s cognitive system, including the structure and
activation of every link and node. Both the occurrence and the magnitude of a
non­monotonic change are for all practical purposes unpredictable, and they
will remain so even as we increase our understanding of the relevant mecha­
nisms. it does not follow that the study of deep learning cannot be scientific;
explanation, not prediction, is the core of science.

interpretation and Manifest Conflict

Given a rich repertoire of representations, some of which might be incompat­
ible, an object, event, situation or task does not uniquely determine its own
interpretation. its mental representation is co­authored by world and mind. A
situation is neither identical to, nor entirely different from previously encoun­
tered situations, so it is likely to match each of several representations to some
degree but none to perfection. As a result, the situation evokes an array of
more or less complete interpretations that might have mutually incompatible
implications for action or discourse. Examples include competing interpreta­
tions of visual scenes (the necker cube), alternative ways to parse a sentence
(they are cooking apples), rules that recommend mutually incompatible actions
or subgoals (left turn, right turn or straight ahead?), and beliefs that make con­
tradictory claims (Sun or Earth at the center?). such choices are often implicit
but become manifest in certain situations such as reversible figures, resource­
limited decisions and explicit disagreements.

Competitive Evaluation via Cognitive utility

Conflicts between multiple incompatible representations of an event, object,
situation or task are resolved on the basis of quantitative properties that reflect
past experience. The particular quantitative aspects might vary from one
processing mechanism to the next. in the context of perceptual processing,
alternative interpretations might differ with respect to the levels of activation
they receive from the perceptual input, as well as with respect to the strength
of the contextual support; how well does the interpretation of an object in a
visual scene fit with the overall interpretation of that scene? in the case of skill
execution, the production rules in a conflict set might differ with respect to
their current relevance, their level of specificity and their cognitive utility. The
last is a function of their history of producing successful outcomes. likewise,
competing beliefs and belief systems might over time exhibit higher or lower
utility. What remains true across such differences is that choices among