314 | 29 CONNECTIONISm: COmPUTING wITH NEURONS
calculation. Yet from a ‘bottom-up’ view, cognition is nothing but the simple firings of
neurons. Cognitive scientists face the problem of how to reconcile these very different
perspectives.
Turing’s discovery offers a possible solution: the cortex is able to carry out this sequential
symbol-rich processing by virtue of being a neural network acting as a general-purpose com-
puter. In 1948 this hypothesis was well ahead of its time, and today it remains among the best
guesses concerning one of cognitive science’s hardest problems.^13