When Yan LeCun started playing with artificial neural networks, did he know why they worked? Aren't artificial neural networks very much inspired from nature

When Yan LeCun started playing with artificial neural networks, did he know why they worked? Aren't artificial neural networks very much inspired from nature anyway, not unlike early airplane wings? I mean between a cargo cult and a very reasonable attempt at mimicking nature, there is whole continuum and being quick at using the extreme label (that is, "cargo cult") to dismiss an approach just because you don't agree with it, seems quite dishonest to me.