Psychological Models
CAs are a great basis for psychological models.
- CAs make a good basis for a psychological model because they are based
at a physical level. Neurons
- Other bases for models are much weaker because they are all introducing
a metaphor.
- Symbolic systems like production systems introduce the metaphor of symbols.
We might have metaphorical symbols in our brains, but neurons aren't metaphors.
- Similarly, we don't have a back-propagation system
- Even more biologically plausible systems like ART depend on biologically
impossible assumptions (e.g. highly constrained neural strucutre).
- Clearly these other models are useful, but CAs are really a dependable basis.
A computational model of CAs is needed:
- CAs are really powerful and you can wave your hands and say they'll do this and
that
- However, it's really hard to make them do this and that
- We need to do experiments to see what we can do with CAs
