Connectionism vs AI?

[Tony Chan]

Jerry Feldman was asked by Scientific American magazine to write an
article on connectionism and artifical intelligence. His assumption or
working assumption as he embarked on the subject was the following:
"Often viewed as competing, these two approaches to understanding
intelligent behavior can be combined to yield scientific and practical
advances." [Fri, 14 Dec 90 12:33:02 EST]

A day later, Andrew J. Worth asked [Sat, 15 Dec 90 13:59:52 EST] "[A]re
there fundamental differences between connectionism and AI that make
them incompatible in an ideal sense?"

Concerning this and related questions, Elizabeth Preston [Sun, 16 Dec 90
14:41:02 EST] mentioned, "a great deal of ink and hot air has been
expended on it in various public forums over the last few years. ...  I
don't see that the question is answerable at this stage in the
development and theoretical understanding of the two fields.  In fact,
I'm not sure it's even askable."

I would not ask that question; instead, I would ask a larger question
which, if satifactorily answered, would make the previous question
obsolete: Should there exist one formal (mathematical) unifying paradigm
within which all investigations concerning the artificial re-creation of
intelligence are to be carried out?

If the answer is yes, as I believe, an immediate question that should be
asked is the legitimacy of the current ad hoc separation of these
related areas: artificial intelligence, connectionism, pattern
recognition, cognitive science, cybernetics, machine learning, etc.?

In fact, not only there should be one---there is one!  So the answer is
affirmative in existential sense and in constructive sense.  I refer
interested readers to the communication of Lev Goldfarb [Thu, 27 Sep 90