Is Connectionism Compatible with Rationalism?

The main aim of this paper is to explore three connectionist stances on innateness. The argument is that connectionists can be nativists without necessarily being, for want of a better term, `symbolic nativists'. Also, connectionist versions of the innateness hypothesis can be just as strong in their commitment to nativism as symbolic versions. In addition, it will be claimed that these three connectionist stances on nativism concern synthetic a priori knowledge. Since the synthetic a priori is essentially a category of knowledge based on rationalist philosophy, the conclusion is that connectionism is compatible with rationalism. (This paper was published in Connection Science, 4 (3-4), 1992, pp. 271--292.) 1 Introduction Ramsey and Stich (1991) assess connectionist language models with respect to nativist claims (Chomsky, 1965; 1966) that human beings have a rich store of innate knowledge. These claims are supported by the `fact' that it would be impossible for children to learn lang..