This collection of papers has been derived from a special triple-issue of SYNTHESE devoted to epistemology and cognition. About two-thirds of those contributions are reprinted here in a somewhat different sequence, which is intended to highlight and to reinforce their relationship to one another. By way of introduction, a few words concerning each might prove to be helpful. The Prologue provides a searching analysis of the relations between connectionism and varieties of nativism, in which Stephen Stich and William Ramsey distinguish three positions - minimal rationalism, antiempiricism, and rationalism - suggesting that connectionism cannot defeat the first but might defeat the third, where most of the interesting cases seem to fall in between.