Page 46 - Deep Learning

The Nature of the Enterprise 29

Table 2.1. Summary of background principles presupposed throughout this book.

Key concept Statement
Mentalism Explanations of human behavior require a level of description that
is distinct from descriptions of the behavior itself, and also from
descriptions of the brain and of the environment.
Representation Representations are structures that refer to something (other than
themselves).
Functionalism Cognition is to be analyzed in terms of processes that implement
the main cognitive functions (acting, learning, perceiving
remembering and thinking).
Multiple processes Each function is implemented via a repertoire of basic processes,
as opposed to a single process.
Multiple levels Cognition has to be understood at multiple levels of description.
Projection Interactions among the processes at system level N create the
properties and processes that occur at system level N+1.
Central executive Although mental processes occur in parallel, they are coordinated
in the service of particular intentions or goals; the latter are
pursued sequentially.

undergoes. In the case of human cognition – or the intellect, as it would have
been called in the 19th century – the relevant stuff consists of representa-
tions. Cognitive functions like seeing, remembering, thinking and deciding
are implemented by processes that create, utilize and revise representations.
The processes are coordinated by a control structure. Table 2.1 summarizes
the central concepts. The elaboration of these concepts provides a sketch of
human cognition that is unlikely to be entirely accurate but nevertheless is
the best available.

The Centrality of Representation
Few buildings in the world are as well known and recognizable as the Eiffel
Tower in Paris. Visualize the Eiffel Tower; try to see it in your mind’s eye! An
attempt to comply with this exhortation creates a transient state of mind of a
special sort, usually called a visual image. The image stands in a special rela-
tion to the Eiffel Tower itself: It is an image of the Eiffel Tower. Borrowing a
term from linguistics, the image refers to the Eiffel Tower; it does not refer to,
for example, the three-crowned City Hall in Stockholm or the Sears Tower in
Chicago. The opposite is equally true: Images of the latter do not refer to the
Eiffel Tower.