Connectionism the Miracle Mind Model

Connectionism as a model of the mind has recently been challenging the Classical model, in which the mind is regarded as symbol manipulating system. The main arguments against Connectionism concern its inability to form mental representations for complex expressions, which can be used for structure sensitive operations. Some argue for hybrid models which combine some of the most attractive features of the Classical and Connectionist models. This paper starts off by examining the definitions of the different approaches and also their strengths and weaknesses. One section is devoted to the debate between the advocators of the different paradigms, including the arguments about the lack of compositionality and systematicity in Connectionist cognitive models. We then argue for the Connectionist approach as the most attractive model of the mind. This includes performing the “miracle” of defining structure sensitive operations on non-symbolic representations of concepts.