No subject

connectionist strategy can be discerned. Up to now this strategy has been
largely implicit, to be found only in some quotes concerning the progress
and goals of the connectionist research program, which usually end up
somewhere in the introduction or the concluding remarks of an article.
Those who are more theoretically inclined do write on connectionism and its
role within cognitive science, but their articles mainly concern the
differences between connectionism and symbolism and -again- only mention
'the strategy' implicitly.

In the thesis I make explicit how connectionist research is striving
towards the goal of better understanding cognition. By taking the above
mentioned quotes literally, it is possible to construct a model of progress
in the connectionist field. This stagewise model is valuable in several
ways both within the field and in its relation to the 'outside world'. 
The main aim of the thesis is to describe this (methodological) stagewise
treatment (of the progress) of connectionism, which is to be called STC
-Stagewise Treatment of Connectionism-. To further indicate the value of
such a model, it will be used to examine several important aspects of
connectionism. 
The first is a closer look at connectionism itself. It is important to
place the research that is currently done into a larger connectionist
perspective. STC can be used to give an indication of the stronger and
weaker points of this field of research and by making these explicit,
connectionism can proceed in a more 'self aware' and precise way. 
The second use of STC lies in a comparison with other research programs,
specifically of course the classical, symbolist program, which is
considered to be the main competitor within the area of cognitive science.
In order to do that I describe progress of the symbolist program in a way
similar to STC.
In the third part of the thesis the practical use of the model is
demonstrated by using STC to describe in greater detail one specific
sub-area of cognitive research, that of developmental psychology. The main
goal is to show the value of STC as a descriptive tool, but after
establishing the legitimacy of the model some indication of its
prescriptive uses will follow.