connectionism
connectionism noun: any of several fields of psychology that model brain processes in terms of interconnected networks.
Noun
connectionism (uncountable)
- Any of several fields of psychology that model brain processes in terms of interconnected networks.
- What accounts for the cool reaction to the emergence of connectionism in the 1980s on the part of people who study language for a living? […] It is clear that many linguists view connectionism as a revival of the radical empiricist approach that dominated the dark ages in psychology—the...1992, Steven Davis, Connectionism: Theory and Practice, Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 84
- [Jerry] Fodor was a bitter opponent of connectionism, arguing that there are key features of our mental lives that it cannot explain. In particular, it cannot explain the fact that many of our cognitive capacities are systematically related to one another.2017 December 6, Mark Cain, “Jerry Fodor obituary”, in The Guardian, →ISSN
Origin of connectionism
From connection + -ism.
Questions about connectionism
- What does connectionism mean?
- Connectionism means any of several fields of psychology that model brain processes in terms of interconnected networks.
- What part of speech is connectionism?
- Connectionism is a noun.
Words near connectionism in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: connectionism (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “connectionism.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/connectionism. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.