Tim van Gelder

Professor of philosophy at the University of Melbourne. van Gelder is one of the foremost proponents of dynamicism or dynamic cognition in cognitive science. This is a theory of cognition that proposes that dynamical systems theory provides a better model (or metaphor) for human cognition than the 'computational' model. So for example, he tries to show that the Watt governor is a better metaphorical description of how humans act than, say, a Turing style computer. Dynamicism is closely associated with connectionism. Both approaches are suspicious of representationalism, with dynamicism being even more suspicious than connectionism in this respect. Some dynamicists argue that representations are simply not necessary to model cognition.