Connectionism vs AI

[Andrew J. Worth]

Jerry Feldman's posting ("Scientific American") foments a long        
standing dispute within my mind; are there fundamental differences    
between connectionism and AI that make them incompatible in an ideal  
sense?                                                                 
                
Examining each as an approach to the same goal, if one of               
connectionism's fundamental tenets is to mimic biological computation,         
and AI, on the other hand, holds sacred the extracting of the essence    
of "intelligence" while ignoring implementation details, (i.e.  a     
bottom up vs.  top down dichotomy) then is it not a bastardization of   
both to combine them?                                                
                                                                            
If each approach has fundamentally different and opposing assumptions,     
then wouldn't one or both of them have to be weakened in their             
combination?               

Andrew J. Worth                  worth at park.bu.edu    
Cognitive & Neural Systems Prog. (617) 353-6741
Boston University                (617) 353-7857 (CAS Office)
111 Cummington St. Room 244      (617) 353-5235/6742 (CNS Grad Offices)
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