Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses Graduate School 1994 Cognition and Learning: The mplicI ations of a Situated Connectionist Perspective for Theory and Practice in Education. John A. St. julien Louisiana State University and Agricultural & Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses Recommended Citation St. julien, John A., "Cognition and Learning: The mpI lications of a Situated Connectionist Perspective for Theory and Practice in Education." (1994). LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses. 5829. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_disstheses/5829 This Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Historical Dissertations and Theses by an authorized administrator of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 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Ann Arbor, MI 48106 COGNITION AND LEARNING: THE IMPLICATIONS OF A SITUATED CONNECTIONIST PERSPECTIVE FOR THEORY AND PRACTICE IN EDUCATION A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in The Department of Curriculum and Instruction by John A. St. Julien B.S., Louisiana State University, 1973 M.S., Louisiana State University, 1988 August 1994 © Copyright 1994 John Anderson St. Julien All Rights Reserved A man picks up a problem and calls it his, with perhaps slight appreciation that he is taking up a task which arises out of the conflict of insistent social processes, for the solution of which he has volunteered. He makes it his own, but he did not originate it. The academic attitude of creating problems for Doctors' theses is not favorable to the just realization of what problems are when they are genuine. —Mead, The Philosophy of the Act, 1938, p. 99 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The social theme of this dissertation imposes both a special burden and a special joy in thanking those who have helped make the work possible. I believe—and I have tried to give others good reasons to think—that I cannot act alone in any real sense in the formulation of this work. I act as a member of my community and not simplyfor it. The community of discourse at LSU has made this dissertation possible and the exciting and collegial atmosphere fostered there contributes profoundly to the work I do. The faculty, the staff, and the graduate students are without peer. I am and remain deeply grateful. Without the rigor-inducing assistance of Layne St. Julien this book would be a substantially lesser product. Her readings and re-readings make for a much more accessible text. In a more traditional vein, I would like to take this chance to honor my family, Betsy St. Julien, Layne St. Julien, Brannon May, and Erin May for the patience they have shown for the harried and the distracted. TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS........................................................................................iv ABSTRACT.............................................................................................................viii CHAPTER 1 Introduction: Learning Problems...........................................................................1 Learning and Descriptive Theorization.............................................................3 Psychologism and Learning Theory..................................................................6 Education and the Need to Go Beyond the Theorization G................... iven 9 Connectionist Learning, Situated Knowledge................................................13 Strategic Choices..................................................................................................15 The Plan of this Dissertation............................................................................. 19 CHAPTER 2 Situating Connectionism: The Horizon Against Which It Appears............... 25 The Current Context........................................................................................... 26 A Discursive H istory...................... 31 Reiss's Narration of the Rise of the Analytico-Referential Discourse 34 Toulmin's Narration of the Development of Modernity............................. 39 Mind, Thought, and Logic: The Development of an Identity..................... 47 The Rise of Cognitive Science...........................................................................51 Emergent Problems in Cognitive Science........................................................54 Emergent Answers to Problems in Cognition................................................60 Conclusions...........................................................................................................66 CHAPTER 3 Connectionism: Computation and the Brain......................................................68 Connectionism Bounded................................................................................... 68 Connectionist Analogies.................................................................................... 70 Connectionism Described.................................................................................. 73 An Example of a Connectionist Memory Model.......................................74 An Examination of a Connectionist Simulation........................................78 The Plausibility of Connectionist Models.......................................................87 The Cognitive Plausibility of Connectionist Models.....................................89 Education and the Classical Cognitivist Account................................89 The Basis for Emergent Cognitive Properties in Network Architectures.......................................................................................... 95 Complexity and the Plausibility of Connectionist Architectures.......................................................................................... 97 Error and the Plausibility of Connectionist Architectures.................99 History and the Plausibility of Connectionist Architectures...........101 Learning: Ill-Formed Problems and Connectionism.........................106 v Learning and Distributed Representation..........................................108 Learning in Simple Multi-Layer Connectionist Networks...............110 Learning, the Teacher, and Environmental Regularities..................116 Learning Temporal Patterns in Recurrent Networks.......................119 Complex Networks, Self-Organization, and Extended Learning................................................................................................121 Summary: The Cognitive Plausibility of Connectionist Networks 127 The Neural Plausibility of Connectionist Models..................................128 The Computational Plausibility of Connectionist Models....................135 The Strength of Network Architectures.............................................137 Time and Space Constraints in Network Architectures..................138 Connectionism's Inadequacies as a Theory of Instruction....................145 CHAPTER 4 Connectionism and Theories of Practice..........................................................148 The Representation Debate............................................................................149 Representation in Connectionist Networks.................................................151 Representation Outside Connectionist Networks......................................160 Abstraction, Embodiment and Displaced Knowledge.............................. 165 Vygotsky on the W o rd ...............................................................................176