Defining ‘Distributed Representation’

Abstract Distributed representation is at the heart of many practical and philosophical concerns inconnectionism, yet it has never been defined in a way that is both precise and comprehensive. This article defines distribution in terms of semantic superposition-many items represented by one representation as formalized within the mathematical framework of distributing transformations. A representation is distributed, roughly, when it can be described by means of a function which is a distributed transform of a function describing the items it is representing. Numerous paradigm examples ofdistributed representationfrom connectionism and elsewhere are shown to be subsumable, formally or informally, under this framework, which supports the idea that semantic superposition and distributing transformations are in fact the essence of distribution. Various advantages and implications of this ew definition are discussed briefly; these include a proof of the falsity of the classical onception of human cognitive ar...