what is a connectionist network?

[thanasis kehagias]

ok, here is my question. i hope it makes sense:

very often i want to refer to "these things". i do not want to call them
neural networks, since it is far from clear to me they really have a
similarity with the human nervous system. so i chose to call them
connectionist networks. i guess this means they are networks with (many)
connections. but this is very general. so i do not have a clear
definition of what i am talking about. i am sure i could come up with
several, but they seem to me to be either too restrictive or too
general. so would anybody care to give their definition of these objects
that this list is about?

the issue is not trivial or vacuously philosophical. i think that even
if we do not come up with a generally accepted definition of what a
connectionist net is, people will have a chance to present competing
opinions. possibly some lurking differences will come in the surface and
the foundations of connectionism will become more secure.

here is a case that i think is fraught with issues (that could be
cleared up). any dynamical system that evolves in discretetime can be
represented (over a finite time interval)  by a feedforward
connectionist network. is it fair to say that dyn.systems are
connectionist networks. conversely, is it fair to say that feedforward
nets are dynamical systems. what are the implications for a time-space
trade off? how much do we have to learn about dyn. systems to do
connectionist research?

ok, after all this i guess i have to give my definition of a
connectionist network. it is rather involved and it goes like this:

"connectionism is not a yes-or-no property. any directed graph
(collection of nodes and directed edges) has a connectionism index,
defined as the ratio of nr. of edges to  nr. of nodes. "

PS:

   has anybody already dealt with the question of defining a CN? references
   welcome.


      Thanasis