Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

Connectionism is drawing much attention as a new paradigm for cognitive science. A n important objective of connectionism has become the definition of a subsymbolic bridge between the mind and the brain. By analyzing an important example of this subsymbolic approach, NETtalk, I will show that this type of connectionism does not fulfil its promises and is applying new techniques in a symbolic approach. It is shown that connectionist models can only become part of such a new approach when they are embedded in an alternative conceptual framework where the emphasis is not placed upon what knowledge a system must posses to be able to accomplish a task but on how a system can develop this knowledge through its interaction with the environment.