Abstract

Pothos's revision of rules and similarity in the area of language illustrates the impression that the classicist/connectionist debate is in a blind alley. Under his continuum proposal, both hypotheses fall neatly within the information-processing paradigm. In my view, the paradigm shift that dynamic systems theory represents (Spencer & Thelen 2003) should be submitted to critical scrutiny. Specific formalizations of the Rules versus Similarity distinction may not lead to a form of unification under Generalized Context Models or connectionist networks.