 Fodor and Pylyshyn’s often cited paper (1988) launches a debate of this kind. They identify a feature of human intelligence called systematicity which they feel connectionists cannot explain. The systematicity of language refers to the fact that the ability to produce/understand/think some sentences is intrinsically connected to the ability to produce/understand/think others of related structure. For example, no one with a command of English who understands “John loves Mary” can fail to understand “Mary loves John.” From the classical point of view, the connection between these two abilities can easily be explained by assuming that masters of English represent the constituents (“John”, “loves” and “Mary”) of “John loves Mary” and compute its meaning from the meanings of these constituents. If this is so, then understanding a novel sentence like “Mary loves John” can be accounted for as another instance of the same symbolic process. In a similar way, symbolic processing would account for the systematicity of reasoning, learning and thought. It would explain why there are no people who are capable of concluding P from P &amp; (Q &amp; R), but incapable of concluding P from P &amp; Q, why there are no people capable of learning to prefer a red cube to green square who cannot learn to prefer a green cube to the red square, and why there isn’t anyone who can think that John loves Mary who can’t also think that Mary loves John.