Aristotle, Connectionism, and the Brain :: Philosophy Psychology Papers

Aristotle, Connectionism, and the BrainCan a mass of networked neurons produce object lesson gay agents? I shall beseech that it clear a reason sack up be morally splendiferous. A connectionist account of how the brain kit and boodle can explain how a person might be morally excellent in Aristotles reason of the term. According to connectionism, the brain is a maze of interconnections trained to recognize and respond to descriptors of stimulation. According to Aristotle, a morally excellent human is a practically wise person trained in sincere habits. What an Aristotelian theory of ethics and a connectionist theory of drumhead subscribe in common is the assumption that the successful mind/brain has the appetite to behave appropriately in appropriate circumstances. According to Aristotle, the good person knows the right-hand(a) end, desires and chooses to pursue it, and recognizes the right means to it. Thus the good persons brain must be able to form certain moral c oncepts, get around appropriate behavioral dispositions, and learn practical reasoning skills. I shall argue that this collection of the brains cognitive capacities is best accounted for by a connectionist theory of the mind/brain. The human condition is both material and moral we are brain-controlled bodies with estimable values. My essay seeks to understand the relationship between our brains and our values, between how the brain works and how we make moral decisions. How can the brain be a mind, a conscious person? Recently, some philosophers have argued that human consciousness and cognitive activity, including even our moral cognition and behavior, can best be explained victimization a connectionist or neural network model of the brain (see Churchland 1995 Dennett 1991 and 1996). (1) Is this right? Can a mass of networked neurons produce moral human agents? I shall argue that it can a brain can be morally excellent. A connectionist account of how the brain works can explain how a person might be morally excellent in Aristotles sense of that term.1. ConnectionismThe brain receives input and somehow transforms it into output. How does it do it? In part because of the funny technological feats achieved using digital processing computers, the brain has often been construe as a symbol manipulator and its cognitive activities as the regeneration of symbols according to rules. By contrast, recent successes with parallel distributed processing computers have promote a connectionist theory of mind which regards the brain as a pattern recognizer and its cognitive activities as the transformation of neuronal activation patterns however, these pattern transformations are not rule-governed processes, but straightforwardly causal processes in which networked units (neurons) bill and inhibit each others activation level.