Approaches to Cognition

Contrasts and Controversies

Terry J. Knapp, Lynn C. Robertson

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9781138641013
• eBook ISBN: 9781317248156
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Cognitive Psychology & Cognition
• Index: Psychology

To the vast majority of academic psychologists in the 1980s, the study of cognition referred to that area of psychology known as 'cognitive psychology'. The major basis of this area had been the computer metaphor with its accompanying notion of the individual as an information-processing system. Yet within the field the study of cognition is much broader and has a history that reaches into antiquity, whereas 'cognitive psychology' as information-processing psychology had only recently become the standard bearer of cognitive studies.

One of the purposes of this volume, originally published in 1986, was to articulate some of the fundamental distinctions between and concordances among different orientations concerning the study of cognition. The collection includes chapters on information processing, ecological, Gestalt, physiological, and operant psychology.

1	Cognitive Psychology and Philosophy of Mind

Daniel N. Robinson

Georgetown University

Discourse on the nature of thought has been an integral feature of the history of philosophy since the time of Socrates and his anthropocentric dialogues. And, although experimental modes of inquiry do not appear until the nineteenth century, this older philosophical tradition turns up any number of important leads and insights. It is not these, however, that will most repay the attention of contemporary psychologists who have, after all, committed themselves to the scientific study of thought or “cognitive processes.” The modern investigator may be impressed but generally not informed by the conclusions and overall perspectives arising from philosophical reflections on the subject. Instead, what most recommend the latter are the larger implications philosophers have drawn from their assessments of human cognition; implications of metaphysical, moral, social, and political consequence.

The present essay does no more than review the highlights of philosophical approaches, noting where appropriate how a given discovery or argument bears upon the concerns or practices of contemporary psychologists. The author’s assignment here is to provide an introduction to essays of a more focused and technical nature; to provide a broad philosophical context within which such focused and technical treatments may be located and organized.

COGNITION AND THE PROBLEM OF KNOWLEDGE

Metaphysics is concerned chiefly with the interdependent studies of ontology and epistemology. Ontology is the disciplined inquiry into the nature of real existence or “being” and with an exhaustive determination of what constitutes “being.” Whether or not there are mental events, for example, is an ontological question. Epistemology is the disciplined inquiry into the nature of knowledge itself, and the critical examination of the methods by which we acquire (claimed) knowledge. Whether or not introspective reports provide valid evidence of mental events, for example, is an epistemological question.

Among the pre-Socratics, it was perhaps Heraclitus who most fully appreciated the difficulty of developing a coherent and valid conception of reality. The famous maxim, Nemo descensit bis in idemfluminem, is popularly understood as referring to the river’s endless changes; to the constant flux of nature that is never the same on successive occasions. But there is a deeper claim contained in the expression. The claim is not simply that the river does not remain constant, but that no one enters the same river twice. The observer, too, is a changing creature whose dynamics mingle with that of nature itself. Even if the river were constant, the observer is not.¹

In the more psychological of the Dialogues (e.g., Meno, Protagoras, The-aetetus, Republic) Socrates draws a number of important inferences from the fact that, although the material world is indeed constantly changing, human rationality is able to grasp utterly immutable and necessary truths. This fact poses both ontological and psychological problems and, although much progress toward solving the former would be made by later philosophers, the psychological dimension still remains incompletely charted. It is instructive to note the difference between the ontological and the psychological sides of the issue. The former may be illustrated by the Pythagorean theorem, a² + b² = c², true for any and every right-angle triangle. The drawn (“empirical”) triangle never perfectly honors this equation and thus we could not develop such a relationship out of mere observation. Moreover, a perceptually based theorem could rise no higher than the level of probable truth, whereas the Pythagorean theorem is a necessary and certain truth. The ontological question arising from this is whether in fact there are such ideal or true figures; the perfected archetypes of which material (e.g., drawn) right-angle triangles are but defective and transient approximations.

Aristotle insisted² that Socrates never granted ontological status to such “true forms,” though it is clear that Socrates’ theory of truth requires just these properties of immateriality, abstract relationship, and immutability. It remained for later empiricistic philosophers (e.g., Hume) to argue that the truth and certainty of such propositions are entirely verbal. Thus, the Pythagorean theorem does no more than rediscover the definition of a right-angle triangle such that its “truth” is analytic. It is true in just the way that All unmarried men are bachelors is true.

Note, however, that although this addresses the ontological claim as to the alleged existence of perfect or true forms, it is utterly aloof to the psychological question as to how we come by conceptions of necessity, certainty, and immutable truths. When Piaget depicted the empiricist as one who believes we discovered the series of positive integers one-at-a-time³ he may have been too dismissive, but he did underscore the difficulty of explaining universal concepts experientially. In any case, it is important to recognize that the ontological fate of universals does not determine or explain their psychological standing. To know that a² + b² = c² necessarily and universally cannot simply reflect a peculiar habit of speech or an elaborate form of synonymy. The adverbs are, after all, referential, even if all that is referred to is a definitional truth. The concept of necessity or of certainty is the psychological fact needing explanation. To invoke the rules of logic or the law of contradiction is not to explain but to rediscover the fact.

In his treatise on the soul or mind (De Anima) Aristotle⁴ directly addressed the psychological aspect of such concepts and accorded to human beings a special faculty for them. He called this epistemonikon that, despite convention to the contrary, should not be translated “reason” (nous) or “wisdom” (phronesis). There is, as it happens, no suitable English word. Indeed, even in the Fourth Century B.C. epistemonikon was a philosopher’s term. It is most accurately rendered by the phrase, “that by which we comprehend universal propositions.” Interestingly, Aristotle notes that this faculty “… does not move,” a qualification intended, I should think, to draw attention to its nonmaterial nature. It is not Aristotle’s purpose in De Anima to examine the ontological status of universals but to provide a gross classificatory scheme that respects the major differences displayed by living things. Though all are animated by “soul”—defined simply as the first principle (arche) of all that lives or is alive (zoön)—this principle expresses itself variously in a number of distinct powers or faculties. Except for epistemonikon, all such powers are treated by Aristotle as resulting from natural, biological processes. A good case can be made for taking De Anima as occasioning the birth of the so-called MIND/BODY problem. In light of the history of the problem, it is to Aristotle’s credit perhaps that, having recognized it, he chose not to “solve” it!

In the Hellenistic period of Greek philosophy, both Epicurean and Stoic systems would address the nature of concepts and would depart in one or another way from Plato and Aristotle. Epicurus was decidedly empiricistic in his cognitive psychology; something of a pre-Humean in arguing that general concepts (universals) arise from the compounding of simple sensations and are embraced linguistically by general terms.⁵ A concept (prolepsis) is formed by such Humean principles as repetition and resemblance by which a mental image becomes installed in memory. New experiences are then compared with the stored prolepsis to determine if they are to be included in an established category or, as we now would say, schema. The Stoics, too,—at least in the School’s early period (Zeno, Antipater, Chrysippus, Cleanthes)—were reductionistic in their cognitive psychology that was, after all, answerable to their essentially atomistic ontology. Convinced that all real existence was but the various orderings of elementary constituents, the early Stoics treated concepts as associational notions grounded in experience. But they went further and deeper into the functions of language than did the Epicureans and anchored all conceptual knowledge to linguistic competence.

From the early Christian (Patristic) period until the Seventeenth Century, the subject of Cognitive Psychology was tied to the larger mission of Christian teaching and scriptural exegesis. Patristic and Scholastic philosophers, nearly all of whom were theologians first, attempted to discover the most apt way of comprehending the truths of that faith that regarded man as made in the image and likeness of God. Recall that even Socrates found in human rationality the means by which we might actually resist Olympian forces. And so we find St. Augustine in the Fifth Century and St. Thomas Aquinas in the Thirteenth devoting long passages to human cognition, its reach, and its implications. An illustration from each of these writers is sufficient to convey how cognitive theory fit into the larger context of religious philosophy.

Augustine⁶ in one place makes the important distinction between percepts and concepts by noting that, although we can conceive of a thousand-sided figure, we cannot perceive it. (This, of course, is one way Augustine established that we can have true knowledge of that which is otherwise unavailable to experience.) The relevant psychological point is that concepts are abstractions that, even if arising from experience, are not possessed as experiences. It is not sufficient, therefore, to show that a given concept might be reducible to elementary perceptions, e.g., that we move from triangle to square to pentagon, etc. on the way toward conceiving of a chiliagon. The latter is not conceived of as a mental image or picture, for such a figure cannot even be perceived as what it is. Rather, conceptual knowledge corrects or improves or completes the sensory record. I return to this later.

In Thomistic psychology a similar thesis is advanced in connection with the problem of “universals.” We perceive objects, though a given object is but the instantiation of a universe of kindred objects. Perception can never be of universals, only particulars. But cognition is able to abstract the universal from perceptually provided single instances. Moreoever, abstrahentium non est mendacium. The abstraction is no lie for the universal is, as it were, there to be uncovered.

DESCARTES AND NATIVE COGNITIONS

Modern philosophy is often said to begin with Descartes, though there is nothing in the records of thought to warrant so sharp a break. As with Bacon earlier in his century and Locke at the end of it, Descartes wrestled with problems bequeathed by Scholastic philosophy, often arriving at essentially Scholastic solutions. There was great originality in the works of Bacon, Hobbes, Descartes, and Locke but originality is “modern” whenever it appears, and it has appeared in all but a few of the past twenty centuries.

Descartes, however, can be said to have erected philosophy of mind on a new foundation, a distinctly psychological foundation. He was interested in mind qua mind and not as an entry point into cosmology or theology or ethics. His famous “method of doubt”⁷ is but the introspective method seeking the ancient prolepsis. Can anything be known beyond doubt? It was only because Descartes could not find a perceptual basis for a number of fundamental concepts that he took recourse to nativistic considerations. That he never subscribed to a trivial theory of “innate ideas” is established by his own explicit disclaimer.⁸ Nativism with Descartes is reached by default, not by design. This can be shown through the example of our concept of matter or, more psychologically, our belief that perceptions are caused by external material bodies. Descartes’ epistemology was of the phenomenalistic variety, akin to that proposed by Aristotle, by any number of Epicurean and Stoic authorities, and by the major writers in the Scholastic period. According to this thesis, the external world physically alters the organs of sensation such that the mind is furnished with perceptual effects of stimuli and not with stimuli themselves. These effects are phenomena, not physical objects. Phenomenalism is just the doctrine that confines human knowledge to the realm of such phenomena.

But it was precisely because of Descartes’ commitment to phenomenalism that the concept of “matter” or an external material world seemed queer. Let us assume that from the moment of birth—or even during intrauterine life—all we ever experience directly are our own sensations. These can amount to no more than phenomena and as such can never be parlayed into something material. How, then, would we ever arrive at the notion that the phenomena are caused by (nonphenomenal) material objects? Descartes could find only one coherent answer, viz., that the mind natively fabricates the concept out of the facts of experience. The concept is “innate” in the sense of being nonempirical.

On the same grounds Descartes concluded that the mind was also predisposed to fashion abstract mathematical concepts and, alas, the concept of God. Such abstractions could not arise from sensory commerce with a world of objects but were, nonetheless, part of the mental equipment of all civilized persons. So too with respect to the creative use of language; the nature of language, its variety and lawfulness, its transcendent range simply could not be explained in terms of mere experience.

Descartes, as is well known, was the father of Analytical Geometry and was especially interested in the nonempirical dimensions of mental life. His MIND/BODY dualism is to be understood as answering to just these dimensions. Descartes was not out to preserve the soul for Christendom; only to provide a consistent and noncontradictory account of human nature. Like Aristotle, he was satisfied that much of this nature was explicable in biological terms, even hydromechanically. This was surely the case with perception, trial-and-error learning, pain-avoiding behavior, and the like. But human psychology consisted of more than these; more than is ever found among actual animals or conceivable automatons. Human psychology includes abstract rationality for which there is no corresponding material entity. Accordingly, this rational faculty cannot be the effect of any such entity. Hence dualism.⁹

John Locke’s celebrated critique of the theory of innate ideas—a critique that never mentions Descartes—is not ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Cognitive Psychology and Philosophy of Mind
• 2. The Emergence of Cognitive Psychology in the Latter Half of the Twentieth Century
• 3. The Information Processing Approach to Cognition
• 4. Why I Am Not A Cognitive Psychologist
• 5. Bringing Cognition and Creativity into the Behavioral Laboratory
• 6. Understanding Animal Cognition
• 7. J. J. Gibson’s Ecological Theory of Information Pickup: Cognition From the Ground Up
• 8. From Gestalt to Neo-Gestalt
• 9. Cognitive Intervention in Perceptual Processing
• 10. Toward a Computational Neuropsychology of High-Level Vision
• 11. Cognitive Neuropsychology
• 12. Putting Cognitive Psychology to Work: Examples from Computer System Design
• 13. A Coordination of Differences: Behaviorism, Mentalism, and the Foundations of Psychology
• AUTHOR INDEX
• SUBJECT INDEX