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Over the last thirty years- thphilo .opby of . clence ha ' become increasmgly~'loc-ar .
Us focus has shifted from the g,e neral featur,e s of scientific ,e nterprise to tbe concepts
theorie'- and practices of particular di-ciplin .s. Philosophy of neur.ocience
philosophy of psychology and philosophy of ,eognitiv,e ' cienoe ar,c three results of
thi . growing specialization. I
This chapter i. a very hon introduction to the phi'losop.hy .of cogJtitilJ;e
psyc1tto~ogy, ,especiaUy in its computational incarnation. Cognitiv,e psycho~ogy
investigate complex organisms at the iltjormation-processing level of analysis and
it can be defined a pecuHar I,eve~ in the en e that it: i u-pended between two
world . On the one hand, there i the ordinary image of ourselve ' a person':f nailleiy
a. self-con .dou . imtentional t ratiQnal agent... Om the otJher hand we ha e the
subpersonal sphere of the cer,e bral events, as investmgated by neuroscience.
There:fore.~ .one of the main tasks for the philosopher ofpsyc.ho~ogy is to unra e~ this
peculiarity trying to shed some light upon tine relations between tbese different ways
of describing .ourselves.
The fol owing pag~ ,a re dedicated to orne clasi,cal attempts to accomplm h
_hi - ta k In the cour ,e of doing .0, we haU draw a very qui,ek ketch of ' he ri e and
dey lopm nt of oognitiv psychology and oognitivle science setting the ' C De for the
other hapters. ofthi book.
I
3
M . Marraffa, M . De Caro' and F. Fer,.,elli (eds) , Carlograplu"es of the MilIci 3- 22 .
2001 Spring "
from Jerry Fodor - Hdefinitely yes'; based on the idea. that propositional attitudes ar,e
the bedrock ,o f a ' cientificaHy adequate p ychology' toO St,ephen -tic:h ' 'posibly
Dot -, motivated by doub about tbe folk ,concept of belief rat ed inter alia ju ,t by
attribution tboory· 10 to Paul Cburch~ and ~ab olutely not " ba ed .on the idea that the
deliverance Born folk concept i the condition of p ychology being r,educible ~o
neur'o cienc and henc-e having a -,cientific nature.
These two peEpective, on the ' lams of folk psychology- the former
'compatibilist the latter e~iminativist '-,are the coordinates that help us to
mwigat,e through theoomplex cono _ptuatlandscap of the cogn~tive :revolution., As
'\ e an . e'e the ri e of cognitive p ycho~ogy i the result .of the rejection .of the
behaviorist liminativlsm (subs ctio:n l2) in favor .of a ,compatihir -.1 project whi.cb
repn sentsa sort of experimental mentaHsm",' l (subs ction 2.1). N verthel.ess the
eliminativi t ghot ha c'ontmued t'o haunt ,eogoitiv,e PY'cmology takLng on alw.ay
new fonns (subs, ction 2.2).
n
A ,po,int i w . worth empha i .. A· Larry Hau er rightly ay , 'although
behaviorism as an a ' owed movement may have few remaining advocates ' some of
its 'metaphy ica~ and methodo:logic.al. chanenge 'are till erym ~ chali · e. 17 ' irt
and foremo .tthe fundam,ental obJection that Skinner had to the mentali ti,c
explana.tion in p _ychO'logynamely tjhe homunculus fallacy L a. vital con_traint on
any · ,e rioumentaH tic p ychology. Thati a p,lau .bIe th,eory of cognition mu 't
avoid the; infinit ~ r gr ~ s triggered by tb att: ~ mpt to ' x.plain a cognitiv capacity by
tacitly positing an internal agent with dIal very ,eap.aeity. 18
Cognitive map ,a nd syntactic ' tructures. Since the 1930s and 19'4 0s th,e
increas,.ing p,e r:ception of the limits of the S(Hmulus)~R:(esponse) explanation mak,es
behaviorism eol ,e toward what would be since the~960 cognitive psyc.ho~ogy.
A landmark in thi ,evolutEon is the dasi,cal series of rat experiments in the Berkeley
laboratory of Edward C. Tolman. The e ,e xperiment , demon trated that the maze-
na.vigation bha ior of rat could not be explained in tenn of -R mechanim
1 admg Tolman to sugg - t that the animals: w ·re building up cOlIlpl -,x
repr'e enta~ional . tate or' cognitive map which helped them ~ocate remnforcers. ]9
I ,
Tbe e Te' ult were pointing mtbe "arne din~ction a ' Kenneth Craik , ugge tion that
the mind does not work directly on reality, but rather on ~sman-sca[e models' ofit. 20
Some ingenious at~empts to refine the S.. R schema we're made to account For
olman eperimental re ultswithout hi troub~esome mlenta~i tic ,oonce ion ,.2 ] I
However such a schema turned out to b totally powedess when the focus shifted
fi"ommaze navigation behavior in ra,t sto verbal be.havior in human beings. Thus it
i hardly urpri ing that one of the main factor of the nan ition from behavior. m ~o
cognitivism was the impetuous development since tbe late 1'950,5 of a mentalistic
theory of language ,namely I oamhom _ky generative linguLtks.22
Over the course of his trenchant ,criticism of empiridst theories of linguisti,c
tea,m ing Chomsky put forward an argument that would become one of the tools of
he cognitivi '~ trade: the poverty ofthe ";timulu:s argument. 2 Let examine the input
and the output of the pmoess of first-language acquisition. A large amount of
empirical e idence attest to. a gap between ~be I.e aming target achie ed by th.e ehi.M
(it mature lingllli tic comp tence) and the)lrimary lingui tic data-; (tb cbUd'
I
e
Bi,% leal information procesing. The ,cope of th hom ' kian argum.ent
goes far beyond the case of language acquisition. And it is not. an overstatement to
c ~aim that iModem ognitivism starts with the u -,e of pov,erty of the stimlu ~us
argument ' .24 Ifit tom out ,that thelle i more information in the re ,pon '_ than~here
is in the sHmulus that promptsth :respo;nse , we must assume the interv ntion of
orne kind of inner proce ingof the timulu. Thi I , work that the or-ganism doe is
an unQbser:able c-au that th ,oogniti i t wfe - from behavior. And thi 1
epi temologic.aUy corr'e ct ,· nce po tulating unobservables uch as elcJctrons and
genes is the standard practice in science'.
Th -refore cognitive p -yc,hology can be d -fm -d asth - -cience that
investigate' the processing of infonnation mnthe head- tha~ is- aU the processes by
which the sensory input is transformed reduced elaborated stored recovered) and
used .15 In _te,ad of the beha ~orist • ',empty organism" cognitivisL rein roduce the
mind construed as an information processor intervening between the
impingements on sensory org~ns and the beha.vioral respone .26 The input
functionally defined since aU tha.t matters to what they are, is what the machine does
rather ~han its phy i,cal realization.
- ow tf:ogniti e proce are comp1lltatio they al mu t be fUDctionally
individuated that is" individuated by tbe causal roOle (or function) they play in the
cognitive · y tem of which th _y are a part independently from how uch a rol!e i
phy -ica ly (or b -tte ~ neurologically) realized. Tbi~ tb .-i - on the 'e - ence ,o f
,oognltion is known as computational funcHonalism '.
Insofar as cognitive psycho~ogy subscribes to computational functionalism it
contribute ' to ,cogniti ·... ,e "ci,ence, namely t e project of interdi .ciplillary study of
natural and artificial inteUigence that begins its matura~ion in the~ate 19'5 0s and
rea.ches a stable intellectua~ and institutional set-up in the ea:rly 19,80s. 29
One point i orth emphaizin .ogniti . e cience i the .tudy of cognition
as infonnation processing by a natural or artificial computer but research in
cogniti e '_ dence i typi!cally about a specific type of computer: for in-tance
co.mputational psychology investigat,es the biological ,c omputer whereas artificial
intelligence (AI) exp·lores the artificial one. The[iefore cogniti e science is not a
di cipHnebut rather a. 'doctrine'; that ha oriented and i , orientinginquiri,e in. a
number of disciplines 3°-s.ome descriptive and empirical (e.g. ·eognitiv,e
psycn.o.ogy hngui tic and more recent~y neuroscience) some pe.culative and
foundationa~ ( .g.,. pb'lo ophy), adome both peculativ . and applied ( .g." _ ).31
properties of LoT synlbols, which ar,e physicaUy to~ened intbe brain li.ke data
structures in a computer.. LoT is a formal sy J:em a:nd hence it rule _ pr'e _elVe the
elnantic propertie of the ymbo~ + Mind . are , in Dennett' oft-cited phra e
~ syntactic -ngin -s that can m+micthe co,mp tence ,o f s mantic engines' ,42
In ReT the propo itional attitude relation in RIM are idntHied witJh the
co!mputational relation ' in CTM. ach propo itio,nal attitude i identified witba
cbaracteJistic cornputationaVfunctional role played by the LoT sentence that it is the
content of til at kind of attitude. For example a LOoT sentence p mi.g ht be tbe content
of a belief inee it i chamcteri .tkallythe output of perceptual '. y.temsand input to
an inferential system that interacts deoeision-theoreti.caHy with des.ires tOo produce
further sentences or action -commands .43 Or equivalently to be~ieve that p is for p
to be avaHable to one set of computation whereas to de ir-e, to r-egretto ho-pe thatp
is for p to be avai1ahleto otber sets of compu~ations.
In the next section we shaH see how cognitive p y,cho~ogy ha addr,essed its
critical potential not QJ11ly again tour phenomenologkal intuitions, about
con ,ciou ne ' and elf-collS,ciou ne. " butal 0 again .t it own Lntentional ground
thu ' op ning th door to new behavioristic and ,eliminativisHc objection ' .
. ay . rm going into 'the house to get a. oke .55 A possible explanation of this
1
pattern ofbehav~or is that the right hemisphere responds to the command by making
inferences that the subject cannot introOspect or report whereas the left .h emisphere
~·interpr.ets' the right hemisphere's r,esponse and tells a:n implau ible tory
unconnected with the command.
We fmd a le ry imilar bypotbe i ab ut the cognitive mechani , I
functionali t philosophy of Inind witb the cognitive revo ution in psychology, and
with the tirst genera~.ion of Al O 'er the lat two decade howeer . thi ~heory has
been under attack rno tty owing to the expan ion f cognitive cience in two
directions: Hv,erticaHy :into tb - brain and hori~ontally into the environment ,. 61 Th,e
(moe proplling the e downward and outward d _ve~opmen~ i' the pr'essure put on
the indi viduali .t modular computationa] and repre ~ entational conce,ption of tbe
mind by neuroscl,e,nces neocoooectlOnist cognitive mode,ling dynanric approaclles
to cognit,ion artificial life real~wodd robotics, and other research programs
ometime grouped under the beading of ' noo- or po I-cia car" cognitive .cience.
The clIJrrent debate on the ,conceptual foundations of cognitive science shows
a range' of positions which ar,e characterized by the mor,e or~,ess radical attitude
toard the impH,cation. of the po t-<Cla . ice1 body of work. At one end of the
spectnJm there is the claim that RCTM is ~ 'by£ar the best theory of cognition that
we 've got 62 and ,the po._t-cla .sical research programs are much ado ab01l.lt nothing.
At the other end of the spectru:mtber,e is a view of the post classical body of
res,earch as an exerci e of extraordinary sdence which preludes to ,the establi hment
of a VI . w paradigm. 6 Then in betw,eeVl the . two po~ei a "re i ioni ·t ' per pective
which accep'ts some critical req1l.lirements of 'the post-classical research programs-
first and for,emost the deep dissatL faction ith the antibiologi m. and indmviduali ' m
of RCTM- and u ·e tbem a guideline t~ r-eoon trl!lctthe ,co nc"ep tual ba e. ,o f
oognitiv - seine .
A.ndy lark i ,a leadin~, advoca,te of revi ionim. He b · Hev,e that R TM can
be ((~con tructed making due aUowance; for 4the ,environmental embedded
oorporeally embodied and neurally efubrained ~ character of natural cognition ~. 64
but without coUapsin,g into the' anti ..re'p reentationalism chara.cteristic of the most
radi,cal r ading of post-classical cognitive science. coordingly, Clark pursu s the
metamorpbosis of RCTM into just one component in a thr,ee... ti,ered 'explanatory
strategy:
forma~ion ofi:n~emal ',tate that de cribe partial ,a peet .of the world and pre cribe
po _ sib~e actions. 6'9 These are "ac ion-oriented representatmons which unli~e Lo,T
ymbol. M'e per, onal (in that th yare related to th agent' need and tbe kin that
it bas)1 lo'cal (in that tbey re~at to the drcumstanc currendy surrounding the
agent) and computationally cheap (compared with Marr' rich inner model of the
vicual scene).
Clark's active externalism confmns a point we made eadi,er namely the
relevance to the pre£ent day of some behavioristic metap,hysica. and methodological
cballenge, . In fact- in ·ofar a 'empha' i on the outward or bella ioral a pect of
thought or intelligeno nd attendant de- mphasis of inward experiential or inner
procedural aspects-is ,tbe hallmark Oof behaviorism" 7U active externalism is
beha iori 'tic.
downw.ard into the brain ari ing from the connectioni t ccOgnitive modeHng and
computational neuroscience.
During the 1970 the funclionali t approach inclined some scientificany-
minded phi 0 opbet to view computational p' ychology a mdicaUy aotonomou
from neuroscience. For xarnple in. Spedal SCIence' Fodor draws a principl . d
argument for a ,ery trong .autonomy of p ychology fro·m a combin.ation of
6unoCtionaii m, multiple realizability the i , and to en-idenHty theory?' By the late
1970s however. some philosophers were objectmg to the divorce of ,cognitive
science frOom neuroscience Paul M. and Patricia S. Church land foremost amongst
them. They t oded tooontinu . to endo~ a v rsion of til id nt' ty th ory and -to
rejec the language of thought hypothesj · .72
The Church~ands' version of the type-identity theory ,com.es from the attempt
to u e the re 'ourc,e of neoconne,ctioni t cognitive modeling to de ,elop a mo,re
biologically respectable form of computational functionaHm. That istbey view th,e
artificial neura~ nel ork a neurally inpired computational ystems and hen,c e
endore the functionaH t idea that the explanation of a cognitive pr ce di r,egar-d
the fact that it mediUlll i made.of nervous tisue: ~el!lronal detail are no mor'e
e en~ial too connectioni t conception of cognition than va.c1ilum.-tob _ or 'Ir-a ni 'tor
details ar,e essential to the dassical conception of cognition embodied in orthodox
AI Fodorean pychology and [folk pychology] it df'."
What the turchland blame on da ical computational functionali m (aka
RCTM) L tha't it failed to dLtinguLh the '~ ,evel of cer,ebral matter from the 1,evel .of
cer _bral architecture. A functionali m that ,a pir'e after bio ~og,lcal p.au ibiJity need
to vi -,W our knowl -Klg - ofth - functional, tructur .ofbrain as a SOUle - of con-traints
oQn tbe computational modeling. From this point of view the strength of artificial
neural networl (c.apacitie;.of learning and elf-.organization fl- ibility. , robu tn
in the presence of perturbations , capadty of dealing with such low- ~ vel tasks as the
processing of sensory inputs and motor outputs) depend on just those structural
3. 10
The tension between compatibilism and eliminativism is the dia~ectic motor of the
de 'e lopmerrtof sdent.fi·c psychology in the twentie'th century. On tbe one hand, th,e
rise of cognitiv,e psyc.hology was the resultant of the repudiation of the eliminativmst
claim ,o f bebaviori m in fav,or ofa compatibili t project that ha produced forms ,o f
mentali m. mcilcally different from the intra. pect~ont mentali m charac'eri tic of
the beginnings of scientific psychology. On the other band the new merrtaH tic
p ' ycho~ogy ha , Ii ,e d a. pr-ecariou. balance c.on tantly at ri k of collap e under the
pre ur,e of alway new behavioritic and e~iminativi ticchaUenge .
This dia.lectic is inescapable. Sdf~critidsm is consbtutive of a _dence that.
ret on uch ,a fragile theoretical ba e a our folk p y hological intuition about the
mental. We bav,e seen tha even Fodor tbe champion ,of compatibili-m radically
restri,cts the scop of his defen e of folk psychulogy .. His scientific intentional
reali m i the hypotbe i that whichevr kind of tate will b p "tulated by a
mature cientific p .ycbology; they mustb ucb that like propo iHonal attitudes , are
1
_ OTE
I Philosophy of neuroscience: Bechtel et al. (2001)· Bickle and Mandik 20(2); Bickle (2003).
PhHosophy of psychology: Hatfield (1995)· Block and Segal (1998); Botteri]~ and Carruthers
(1999)· Bermudez (2005)· Mason Sr~pada ,a nd Stich- (forthcoming)· Wilson (2005 b).
Phm10 ophy ofoognitive ' cjence: Clark (2001);, Gru h (2002)- Havie (2005).
2 Se thi olume. ,ehapiters 20-22_
1 The "dea that folk psychology is ,Ill theory can be differendyconstrued depending, on we
adopt a personal or sl!.lbpersona~ perspectlve (see tich and Ravenscroft 1994 . At thoe personal
] v ] folk p. ycholo,gy i a theory of mind implicit in our ryday talk about mntal tat
(see LewIs 1972). At the subpersonal ]'evel, folk psychology can be defined a ~~heory" in the
sens'e that it is a tadt knowledge structure, a body .of internally represented. informa ion wh~ch
g,u ides the cognitive mechanisms underlymng mindreading. In th "s perspective, the theory
imJ'IHcit in 'Our e eryd31y talk about the mind i ~ikely to be ' an articulation of~hat fragment of
[th _ ubpersona~ f'O~k p ychological til _my which i.s avaiJabl _ to oon do," refl _ction"
(Ravenscroft 2004~ Cm:rc/utii l'lg Remarks).
4 BJock (1995) draws a distinc ion be ween '"phenomenal consciousness and "access
,c onsciou ness". A mental state i acce _s consc~ous if ~ts content is available for use in various
infor-rnation-proce sing pmcesses, ~ike inference veiba1izafon and acti.on planning. See tbi
vo~ume. ppm190 ff.
S Brentano ([ 1874]11'973 ppm88-89).
6 It follows that in attributm n.g a true (or false) beli fto an ag nt we buHd a .tl:U?t'arepresentation
that rep,r esents hislher true (or fa lse)1repr s.entation. See this vQlume. ,c hap,t er 22 pa . '.fm.
7 Heider andimmel (1'944).
1- Very s litably, HaUl' ld critidZ! s "the conventional story .of psycho]ogy!s, nov I founding
,ca. 1:879 (2002 ~). 213}, and argues that the new experimental psycholQgy was the ,o utcome
.of ~he' graduaJ trm -formation of a p'reviou ... natura] philosophical p ycbology" (p. 209') .
I Jervis this v.olum.e, p. 147.
I This point is emphaswzed by Dennett (1978 pp'. 58ff.) terelny (1990 p .. 33) and WHso.n
(1999, p. xix).
19 Tolman (~948.
·Empty organism is the term used by E.G. Boring to char.acterjze Skinneli s position
(quoted in C\vell and Simon 1972 875).
27 Fodor and Pylyshyn (1981).
28 Pat moster. thi olume p. 55.
29 See Bechtel Abrahamsen .and Graham (1998); adel and PiaUeUi Palmarilli 2002).
30 ee Block (1983 p. 521 and Mar,coni (2001 p . 18). Harm h (2002) oppo 'es thi "narrow"
I
s Fodor (1985 p'. 422 empbas"s in original). BenIludez ((000) glo,s ses this, pll ssage by
making a di tinction b _tween two different type of p ychologkal _planation. The
,e -planation of folk p ychology are ·'horizontal" (they " plain a particular. vent or ta~e Ln
terms of amecdent tate and e ent). They are ·"strate,glc and predict! e", allowing u • toO
na i,gate th ocial world" (B rmud 2005 p. 33). By c{)ntra' t the xplanation · of
,computationa,l psychology are lyertic,al : they aim to provide ·'legitimati,'on ' or ' grounding
for our fo~k-p ycho~ogical horizontal exp,l.anatory practice (p. 36). B .mllidez make dear that
the latter ar the xp1ana.tion ··,exten iJy _tudL d by philo oph .fS ,o f c' enc ,. ho t nd to
u tbe ocabulary of rduction (,. hich in my term , is imp y one typ , of vertical
,e planation) p. 336).
I
4,1 ee orst (1999 p.170; 2005, subsection 2.1)· Aydede (2004 subsection 5.2).
42 Denn _Itt (19'9 _, p. 335)..
we need to und _ mndand identify our el ' ,a tmnking on iou b ·ing .. (thl volume p.
~ 52) e al 0 Meini and Paterno ·tel'" "bo:ttom-up," app,roaeh to ,cone pt
chapter 8.
48 o.enntt (1993, 193). Objections to thi bottom-up approach to consciou ne hila ,e b .n
raised by those phi losophers who think that the only legitimate sense of consciousness ~s
phenomenal consciousness and anachronis~ically restore the classic primacy of first-person
phenomenology (see e.g. Seade 1992). Providentially however twO' much more attl'aict~ve
options ,are ava~ ~able: 0) it ~s possible to argue that the only ~egitimate sense of consdousness
i Q,cce:s oonciousne : ( 'ee. ,e.g. Denn,ett 1991- eeal 0- thi olume cbapter 17" .ction 6)'
(ii) it i po ible to argue' that phenomena] ,con iou ne mul be' e-xpJicated in. cau al
functional or rep,r esentational (i .e. access-re~ated ' ) terms (see, e .g. th is, vO'lume ,c hap't er 14' .
49 Pau~ Rkour cha:ra.c~rize Freudian p ychoanaly ' i ,as ''une anti-phenomenologi,e ,qui
,exig,e, non laJ r'eduction a Ia conscience mads ~,aJ reduction de la conscience' (1969, p. 137).
How .r a we have ju teen Fr,eud' , i.n.quiry into tl1 . unconscioOUS start from a
ccmsdou ne . taken a ' giv,en. A Jee . i note thi make p ychoanaly ,i • a di.a lectkalvari:mt
oOr phnomenology' 1993 p. 320 n. IS). In contrast" c.ogniti 'e psycJbotogy can be qu~te
I
56 Stich (19 3 p. 231 )...But see Rey (] 988 for a ""comp-atm biHs U reply to this argument,
Recently tich himself has rad'ca1ly downsized his anti.-introspectionism in. view of some
w'Ork oOn first-person mindreading; ~tlhe kinds 'Of mwstakes that are made in [tbe 'experiments
reported by isbett and Wilson]1are typical1y not mistakes in detecting on .. sown m ntal
state .. Rather, the studies show that ubject . make mi take in rea aning about their own
mental -tate ·' ichols and Stich 2003 , p .. 16 ~ '.
57 Stich 0( 1983 p . 230).
58 Ibid. p. 188..
Such modJhould pro ,u eful in providing constraints ofthjrown. [ ... ] · 0 ., not only do,s
biology inform the' construction of computat~onal mod, 1 but ide~Uy tho am . mod, L can
help suggest important experiments £or neuroscien ists to. perfoml' (2002 p,. 8,87).
4 Lower and Rey (1991. p. x~v).
8S In thi olum the chapters 16- 9' focll on the top-d.own con tra~nt whe:rea the chapter
2 and 23 emplha .ire the bottom-up .one .