Final Word on Harnad's Final Word

[Alan Prince]

``The Eye's Plain Version is a Thing Apart''

Whatever the intricacies of the other substantive issues that
Harnad deals with in such detail, for him the central question
must always be: "whether Pinker & Prince's article was to be taken 
as a critique of the connectionist approach in principle, or just of
the Rumelhart & McClelland 1986 model in particular" (Harnad 1988c, cf.
1988a,b).

At this we are mildly abashed:   we don't understand the continuing
insistence on exclusive "or".  It is no mystery that our paper
is a detailed analysis of one empirical model of a corner (of a
corner) of linguistic capacity; nor is it obscure that from time
to time, when warranted, we draw broader conclusions (as in section 8).  
Aside from the 'ambiguities' arising from Harnad's humpty-dumpty-ish
appropriation of words like 'learning', we find that the two modes
of reasoning coexist in comfort and symbiosis.  Harnad apparently
wants us to pledge allegiance to one side (or the other) of a phony
disjunction.  May we politely refuse?

S. Pinker
A. Prince