Foundations of Deep Learning. An introduction to the Special Issue

Deep learning approaches to mind, brain, and behavior raise new philosophical and methodological questions about the nature of artificial intelligence (AI) and its relationship to biological cognitive systems. The articles in this Special Issue combine insights, results and methodologies from philosophy, psychology, AI, neuroscience, linguistics, and cognitive science more generally, to explore some of those questions, including the relation between deep learning models and the brain, the testability, transparency and explanatory power of deep learning models, and their abilities for inductive reasoning, language processing and semantic understanding. By engaging with these foundational questions, the Special Issue as a whole contributes to illuminate deep learning, illustrating the need for, and fruitfulness of, interdisciplinary perspectives in cognitive systems research.