It is hard to believe that was less than a decade ago. The real battle had just begun. It is thoughtful and intelligent in its attempts to grapple with some of the central problems of cognition, more particularly with the significant criticisms that have been sent connectionism's way since its arrival as a major player in cognitive science. His command of the connectionist literature is masterful. Perhaps even more importantly, his command of the literature critical of connectionism is masterful as well.
Straw men are few, though some do turn up to advance the narrative flow.
This does not mean that the book is not partisan. Jerry Fodor, not surprisingly, plays the part of Grendel in Clark's story but, as Clark is far more considered than was Beowulf, Fodor is depicted more even-handedly and with more respect, even if it is clear from the start that he is destined to fail in the epic struggle that ensues. In short, the book is a spirited, but valuable and intelligent, defense of connectionist cognitive science. Thus, he has carved out an interesting position for himself, abandoning folk psychology as the basis of cognitive theory, but pulling up short of the precipice of eliminativism. These include the superposition and distribution of representations which, it is argued, result in a natural account of the semantic relatedness of representations.