Natural Ethical Facts by William D. Casebeer

Author:William D. Casebeer [Casebeer, William D.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2011-02-17T05:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 5

Deeply ingrained habits are richly structured cognitive acts that we can’t help but engage in. Automaticity is part and parcel of the ontology of habits. Before discussing the neural structures that mediate action-oriented habits, however, I should briefly review some of the skills that connectionist networks have managed to emulate. This list should include, but is by no means limited to, the following: pattern recognition, pattern completion, mental modeling, analogical inference, Bayesian inference, abduction, deduction, hypothesis generation, vector calculations of all sorts, image compression, principal components analysis, feature discovery, independent components analysis, computing the arguments of logical operators, linear regression, non-linear regression, multiple regression, classification, autoregressions on time-series analysis, fuzzy inferences, function approximation, parallel combinatorics, multiple-constraint satisfaction, combinatorial optimization, cascade correlation, object identification, content-addressable memory implementation, and universal function approximation. Bluntly, the appropriately structured nets demonstrate Turing-equivalence computational ability. Admittedly, I mix levels of computational analysis in this list (e.g., vector calculations are what enable neural networks to complete patterns); and, of course, just listing Turing equivalence is enough. However, I am relatively unashamed, as I think it often necessary to remind ourselves just how powerful this approach to cognition can be, especially when confronting arguments such as “Connectionism is nothing but associationism.”21

In more practical terms, these skills have translated into (again, among others) the following real-world abilities: nets can play games, read aloud, do proofs, add numbers in base 10, learn the past tenses of words, model lexical development in humans, solve the balance beam problem, simulate deep dyslexia, model deficits in semantic memory, model schizophrenia, model memory formation, steer automobiles, recognize speech, make robots walk, scuttle around like cockroaches, swim like fish, daydream, translate languages, process sentences, recognize faces, recognize emotions, identify enemy tanks, forecast the weather, detect cancer, identify patients at risk for heart disease, emulate the scratch reflex, grab objects, act like leeches and crayfish, and sort good apples from bad ones. Unfortunately, there are no nets yet (aside from natural biological ones) that can write books. Again, only slight apologies for mixing levels of task analysis. For confirmation of both 6750 CH05 UG 4/2/03 6:57 PM Page 113

Connectionism and Moral Cognition

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these lists, consult most any of the works in the bibliography that have the word “neural net” or “connectionism” in the title, as the capacities and projects mentioned span multiple books and articles.

In accordance with chapter 3, the types of learned skills that would be particularly valuable for proper functioning, morally speaking, include all of the basic motor skills; lower-level cognitive processing skills such as perception, memory, etc.; and higher-level skills such as the ability to engage in robust mental modeling, the ability to articulate a theory of mind, the ability to use cognitive aids, etc. Although it is true that ontogeny does not exactly recapitulate phylogeny, it is nonetheless not mere coincidence that we can view individual developmental trajectories as historical recapitulations of proper functions. These trajectories, to an approximation, do resemble an evolutionary unfolding of

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