The notion of levels has been widely used in discussions of cognitive science, especially in discussions of the relation of connectionism to symbolic modeling of cognition. I argue that many of the notions of levels employed are problematic for this purpose, and develop an alternative notion grounded in the framework of mechanistic explanation. By considering the source of the analogies underlying both symbolic modeling and connectionist modeling, I argue that neither is likely to provide an adequate analysis of processes at the level at which cognitive theories attempt to function: One is drawn from too low a level, the other from too high a level. If there is a distinctly cognitive level, then we still need to determine what are the basic organizational principles at that level.
Key words Connectionism - symbol processing - levels of organization - reduction - mechanistic explanation
An earlier version of this paper was presented as part of the Fifteenth Annual Greensboro Symposium in Philosophy (April 1991) and to the Cognition Project at Emory University. I thank members of both audiences, anonymous referees for this journal, and especially Adele Abrahamsen for useful comments and suggestions.