Cognitive Science

A Philosophical Introduction

Rom Harre

This is the first major textbook to offer a truly comprehensive review of cognitive science in its fullest sense. Ranging from artificial intelligence models of neural processes and cognitive psychology to recent discursive and cultural theories, Rom Harré offers an original yet accessible integration of the field. At its core, this textbook addresses the question ?How can psychology become a science??. The answer is based on a clear account of method and explanation in the natural sciences and how they can be adapted to psychological research.

Rom Harré has used his experience of both the natural and the human sciences to create a text on which exciting and insightful courses can be built in many ways. The text is based on the idea that underlying the long history of attempts to create a scientific psychology there are many unexamined presuppositions that must be brought to light. Whether describing language, categorization, memory, the brain or connectionism the book always links our intuitions about how we think, feel and act in the contexts of everyday life to the latest accounts of the neural tools with which we accomplish the cognitive tasks demanded of us. Computational and biological models are used to link the discursive analysis of everyday cognition to the necessary activities of the brain and nervous system.

Fluently written and well structured, this is an ideal text for students who want to gain a comprehensive view of the current state of the art with its seeming divergence into studies of meanings and studies of neurology. The book is divided into four basic modules, with suggestions for three lectures in each. The plan is related to the overall pattern of the semester programme. The reader is guided with helpful learning points, sections of study questions for review, and key readings for each chapter.

Cognitive Science: A Philosophical Introduction, with its remarkable sweep of themes, past and present, truly introduces ?the science of the mind? for a new generation of psychology students.

Cognitive Science should be indispensable reading for students at all levels taking courses in cognitive science and cognitive psychology, and useful additional course reading in other areas such as social psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy of the mind and linguistics.

Key Points

· First major textbook to provide a link between computational, philosophical and biological models in an accessible format for students. Presents a new vision of psychology as a scientific discipline.

· Breadth of coverage - ranging from artificial intelligence, to key themes & theories in cognitive science (past and present) - language, memory, the brain and behaviour - to recent discursive and cultural theories.

· Plenty of student features to help the student and tutor including helpful learning points, study and essay questions and key readings at the end of every chapter.

part one

The nature and methods of science

Psychology is the study of thinking, feeling (emotions), perceiving and acting. The field of cognitive psychology has traditionally been concerned with just one of the four kinds of psychological phenomena: namely, thinking or cognition. What do we mean by ‘cognition’? In scientific matters it is unwise to set up hard-and-fast definitions. It is best to list some examples of what a general concept covers, and to add an etcetera! Among the psychological phenomena in the field of cognition are remembering, reasoning, calculating, classifying, deciding, etc.

In recent years it has become increasingly clear that neither the psychology of the emotions, nor the psychology of perception, nor social psychology can be studied without considerable attention being paid to the role of the processes listed above as the topics of cognitive psychology. In this text we shall be concerned only with the principles and methods of the scientific study of cognition.

Cognitive science is the attempt to study cognitive phenomena in a way not unlike the way the physical sciences study material phenomena. Physics includes mechanics, the study of the laws of motion of elementary material things. Chemistry includes the study of the synthesis of material substances from other material substances in the light of knowledge of their atomic constituents and internal structures. In recent years the field of cognitive science has been taken to include the study of the relevant aspects of the neuroanatomy and neurophysiology of the brain and nervous system.

The history of attempts to create a cognitive science which includes both naturalistic studies of thinking and technically sophisticated studies of the relevant brain activities, reveals many false starts. For the most part the failure of these programs of research can be accounted for by the philosophical presuppositions that their progenitors took for granted. Science is a human practice. Like tennis, the law, politics and other human practices, science has its presuppositions. Some presuppositions of past attempts to create a science of the cognitive activities of human beings were metaphysical, such as the presupposition that the domain of cognition involves non-material entities, ideas in the mind. Some were methodological, such as the presupposition that the work of cognitive psychologists can be reduced to a study of the material aspects of thinking alone, psychology as neuroscience. In studying a scientific project philosophically we bring out taken for granted presuppositions and subject them to critical scrutiny. To do well in the practices of some domain it is desirable to have a clear idea of what is presupposed in what one does. Philosophical studies of presuppositions have a practical role.

Not only are there philosophical presuppositions involved in the practice of the sciences, but there are highly influential philosophical theories of the very nature of science itself. These too we must scrutinize. Taking the sciences to be the disciplined searching for indubitable truths, philosophers have demanded that only what can be perceived by the senses should be admitted to the domain of the sciences. This is the philosophical position of positivism. The contrasting position is realism. The physical sciences, from their beginnings in the ancient world, have been based on hypotheses about processes that cannot be readily perceived. Astronomers imagined various heavenly architectures. Chemists and physicists imagined a realm of minute, invisible atoms, the motions and rearrangements of which accounted for the phenomena human beings could perceive. Realists argue that we have good reason for preferring some pictures of the invisible regions of nature to others. The history of the physical sciences shows a pattern of back and forth between positivistic reactions to unsupported speculations about the causes of what can be observed and realist developments of more disciplined and plausible hypotheses about the world beyond the limits of the senses. At the turn of the third millennium the physical sciences are in a strongly realist phase of this cycle. Physicists are happy with quarks. Chemists have no trouble with atomic structures. Biologists are comfortable with genes. Geologists talk freely about tectonic plates, and so on. We will follow the fashion. The program for cognitive science presented here will be realist, using techniques like those well established in physics, chemistry, biology and the earth sciences, to pass beyond what can be perceived by the senses, into the deeper realms of material reality.

As we look into the philosophy of the natural sciences for guidelines to be followed in developing a scientific psychology of cognition, we find two main aspects of scientific work. There is the complex task of classifying the phenomena of the field of interest. This requires not only that they be found places in a classificatory scheme, but also that such a scheme be well founded, free of contradictions and linked with theories about the nature of what it is we are classifying.

Then there is the task of building explanations of the phenomena of interest. For the most part the processes that produce phenomena are not observable in the same way as the phenomena, if they are observable at all. Chemical reactions can be seen, heard and sometimes smelled. The molecular processes by which they are explained cannot be. Molecules and their behavior are works of the human imagination, representing, one hopes, real productive processes. The techniques by which this phase of scientific work is done are well understood.

However, the insights that have come from a close study of the physical sciences have yet to be fully integrated into the methods of cognitive science. In our course we shall be at the ‘cutting edge’, learning the very latest techniques for creating explanations of psychological phenomena that can stand alongside those of physics, chemistry and biology.

Part I introduces two main themes. We shall be learning how philosophers delve into the presuppositions of human practices. Then we will look closely into the two main phases of a scientific research program, classifying and explaining. Bringing the two themes together will introduce us to the philosophy of science. We shall then be ready to follow the history of attempts to found and develop psychology as cognitive science.

chapter one

A science for psychology

There are two aims in the course. One is to gain a command of what it takes to make a philosophical approach to a human practice, unearthing the presuppositions upon which a way of thinking and acting depends. The other is to achieve some mastery of the basic principles of a unified cognitive science. We shall take for granted that both projects are worth undertaking. Philosophy is a long-standing way of taking up a critical attitude to human practices. Cognitive science, in the hybrid form we will develop it in this course, is, one might say, the best shot yet at achieving a genuinely scientific psychology. There have been many such attempts in the past, but all have so far fallen by the wayside for one reason or another. We will pay some attention to the debris of past enthusiasms that litters the path of history. From each false start we can gain a better view of what it would take to get it right eventually.

We begin with an overview of two aspects of our topic, first sketching the way scientific knowledge is produced and presented. Then we turn to examine what is involved in doing philosophy. We shall then be in a position to understand what it is to do philosophy of science, bringing the two disciplines into fruitful conjunction. It will then be an easy step to the constructive phase of the course – coming to a philosophical understanding of what is required for there to be a science of cognition – a genuinely scientific psychology.

What is the domain of cognitive science?

There is a range of human activities – remembering, deciding, reasoning, classifying, planning and so on – that have traditionally been thought to belong to a group of mental processes, generally falling under the label ‘cognition’. We can think of cognitive activities in terms of tasks. We use our cognitive powers and capacities to carry out all sorts of projects, from deciding what to wear to a party to ‘keeping tabs’ on a bank account. We may use our cognitive powers to solve problems – for example, to find the shortest way home. Tasks can be performed well or ill, carefully or carelessly, correctly or incorrectly, with many intermediate possibilities. Solutions can be more or less adequate, more or less cleverly arrived at, and so on.

The study of these activities, and the standards to which they are taken to conform, is cognitive psychology, the descriptive phase of a psychological science. However, what about the explanatory phase? What must be invoked to account for a person’s ability to make choices, to do sums and to solve problems? The principal thesis of what has come to be called ‘cognitive science’ is that there are neural mechanisms by which cognitive tasks are performed.

The course for which this textbook has been written is based on the conviction that cognitive science should cover a broader field than just the neuropsychology of cognition. It is based on the principle that any branch of psychology, be it the study of cognition, emotions, social action or any other aspect of human mental life, is necessarily a hybrid. It must encompass the naturalistic study of psychological phenomena as they are manifested in what people do. It must also include an empirical and theoretical investigation of the neural mechanisms by which people act and think as they do. Both types of research, however different the natures of the phenomena they study, can be carried out in conformity with the standards and methods of scientific investigations. We will develop our understanding of the nature of scientific as opposed to other kinds of research by attending to how research is actually conducted in the realm of the natural sciences.

Why should it be necessary to take time out to establish what is needed to make a method of enquiry ‘scientific’, in the sense that chemistry and physics are scientific? In the not so recent past psychologists slipped into following mistaken or partial interpretations of the natural sciences. This was particularly true in the days of the dominance of behaviorism. We shall follow the rise and fall of behaviorism as a case study. It illustrates very well how mistaken philosophical views on the nature of science can exert a malign influence on the development of a new science. Even now, a good deal of the misleading terminology of behaviorism and the simplistic empiricism of which it was a part survives among the presuppositions of some contemporary psychology. Fortunately, philosophers of science now offer us a much more satisfactory and plausible account of the natural sciences than heretofore. This will be our guide in following the way that a true cognitive science can be developed.

Our studies in this course will begin with a thorough analysis of the natural sciences. This will provide a methodological springboard from which we will build our understanding of the actual and possible achievements of cognitive psychology and its relation to neuroscience. It will also give us the ability to identify and understand some of its current shortcomings and to appreciate the ways we may overcome them in fruitful programs of research. Some of the practical exercises suggested in the text could become contributions to the growth of cognitive psychology itself.

This course is demanding. We shall be dealing with four disciplines: philosophy of science, discursive or naturalistic psychology, cognitive psychology and the modeling of thought by the use of techniques from artificial intelligence. Finally, to complete the progression, some basic brain chemistry, anatomy and physiology will be required to understand how some a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of abbreviations
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• How to use this book in the classroom
• Part One: The nature and methods of science
• Part Two: The search for a science of human behavior
• Part Three: Towards a scientific psychology
• Part Four: Cognitive science in action
• Epilog
• References
• Name index
• Subject index