Proceedings of the Annual Meeting of the Cognitive Science Society

The apparent contradiction between Smolensky's claim that connectionism is presenting a dynamical conception of the nature of cognition as an alternative to the traditional symbolic conception, and Giunti's recent elaboration of computational systems are special cases of dynamical systems can be resolved by adopting a framework in which (a) cognitive systems are dynamical systems, (b) cognition is statespace evolution in dynamical systems, and (c) diffo*- ences between major research paradigms in cognitive science are differences in the kind of dynamical systems thought most appropriate for modeling some aspect of cognition, and in the kinds of concepts, tools and techniques used to understand systems of that kind.