"The ideas represented in Parallel Distributed Processing
fundamentally challenge the main concepts and assumptions of modern
cognitive science."
- James G. Greeno, The New York Times Book Review
What makes people smarter than computers? These volumes by a
pioneering neurocomputing group suggest that the answer lies in the
massively parallel architecture of the human mind. They describe a
new theory of cognition called connectionism that is challenging the
idea of symbolic computation that has traditionally been at the center
of debate in theoretical discussions about the mind.
The authors' theory assumes the mind is composed of a great number of
elementary units connected in a neural network. Mental processes are
interactions between these units which excite and inhibit each other
in parallel rather than sequential operations. In this context,
knowledge can no longer be thought of as stored in localized
structures; instead, it consists of the connections between pairs of
units that are distributed throughout the network.
Volume 1 lays the foundations of this exciting theory of parallel
distributed processing, while Volume 2 applies it to a number of
specific issues in cognitive science and neuroscience, with chapters
describing models of aspects of perception, memory, language, and
thought.
"Rumelhart and McClelland propose that what is stored in memory is not
specific facts or events, but rather the relationships between the
various aspects of those facts or events as they are encoded in
groupings of neuronal cells or patterns of cell activity."
- Daniel Coleman, The New York Times
"The most intense, most effective and most mind-stretching view of
neurocomputing origins, theories and concerns to yet reach print."
- Intelligence
"[This is] a comprehensive compilation of neural network research and
development. There are algorithms you can use to explore various
methods in the field. If you want information on neural network
technology in book form, this is the set to own."
- Artificial Intelligence Special Interest Group Newsletter
David E. Rumelhart is Professor of Psychology at the University of
California, San Diego. James L. McClelland is Professor of Psychology
at Carnegie-Mellon University.
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