Synthesizing Symbolicism and Connectionism

Paul Thagard, Professor of Philosophy at UWaterloo and fellow member of the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience, wrote a blog post calling the Semantic Pointer Architecture (SPA) a new synthesis in cognitive science, bringing together symbolicist and connectionist approaches. He writes:

As in connectionism, semantic pointers are patterns of firing in large neural populations, but Eliasmith has figured out how to make them also work like symbols in high-level reasoning. ... SPA provides a detailed, neurologically plausible, and mathematically rigorous account of how the dynamics of embodiment, embedding, and action work.

Read more at his blog post. Also check out more of Dr. Thagard's writing at Psychology Today!