Online research in philosophy

The need to align multiple experimental procedures and produce converging results so as to demonstrate that the phenomenon under investigation is real and not an artifact is a commonplace both in scientific practice and discussions of scientific methodology (Campbell and Stanley 1963; Wimsatt 1981). Although sometimes this is the purpose of aligning techniques, often there is a different purpose—multiple techniques are sought to supply different perspectives on the phenomena under investigation that need to be integrated to answer the questions scientists are asking. After introducing this function, I will illustrate it by considering three of the major techniques in cognitive neuroscience for linking cognitive function with neural structure.

What is required to be an interdisciplinary theory in cognitive science is for it to span more than one traditional domain. Generally speaking, as I discuss ...

The notion that the mind is a physical symbol system (Newell) with a determinate functional architecture (Pylyshyn) provides a compelling conception of the relation of cognitive inquiry to neuroscience inquiry: cognitive inquiry explores the activity within the symbol system while neuroscience explains how the symbol system is realized in the brain. However, the view the the mind is a physical symbol system is being challenged today by researchers in artificial intelligence who propose that the mind is a connectionist system and not simply a rule processing system. I describe this challenge and offer evidence that indicates the challenge may be well motivated. I then turn to the question of how such changes in the conception of the activity of the mind will affect our understanding of the relation of neuroscience to cognitive inquiry and sketch a framework in which the cognitive system consists of several levels and in which both neuroscience and cognitive science can make contributions at several of these levels.

Neuroethology is a branch of biology that studies the neural basis of naturally occurring animal behavior. This science, particularly a recent program called computational neuroethology, has a similar structure to the interdisciplinary endeavor of cognitive science. I argue that it would be fruitful to conceive of cognitive science as the computational neuroethology of humans. However, there are important differences between the two sciences, including the fact that neuroethology is much more comparative in its perspective. Neuroethology is a biological science and as such, evolution is a central notion. Its target organisms are studied in the context of their evolutionary history. The central goal of this paper is to argue that cognitive science can and ought to be more comparative in its approach to cognitive phenomena in humans. I show how the domain of cognitive phenomena can be divided up into four different classes, individuated by the relative phylogenetic uniqueness of the behavior. I then describe how comparative evidence can enrich our understanding in each of these different arenas.

Keywords: computational neuroscience, neural coding, brain function, neural modeling, cognitive modeling, computation, representation, neuroscience, neuropsychology, semantics, theoretical psychology, theoretical neuroscience.

Explanatory problems in the philosophy of neuroscience are not well captured by the division between the radical and the trivial neuron doctrines. The actual problem is, instead, whether mechanistic biological explanations across different levels of description can be extended to account for psychological phenomena. According to cognitive neuroscience, some neural levels of description at least are essential for the explanation of psychological phenomena, whereas, in traditional cognitive science, psychological explanations are completely independent of the neural levels of description. The challenge for cognitive neuroscience is to discover the levels of description appropriate for the neural explanation of psychological phenomena.

Although philosophy has often been an outlier in cognitive science to date, this paper describes two projects in naturalistic philosophy of mind and one in naturalistic philosophy of science that have been pursued during the past 30 years and that can make theoretical and methodological contributions to cognitive science. First, stances on the mind-body problem (identity theory, functionalism, and heuristic identity theory) are relevant to cognitive science as it negotiates its relation to neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience. Second, analyses of mental representation address both their vehicle and their content; new approaches to characterizing how representations have content are particularly relevant to understanding the relation of cognitive agents to their environments. Third, the recently formulated accounts of mechanistic explanation in philosophy of science both provide perspective on the explanatory project of cognitive science and may offer normative guidance to cognitive science (e.g., by providing perspective on how multiple disciplinary perspectives can be integrated in understanding a given mechanism).

Although philosophy has been only a minor contributor to cognitive science to date, this paper describes two projects in naturalistic philosophy of mind and one in naturalistic philosophy of science that have been pursued during the past 30 years and that can make theoretical and methodological contributions to cognitive science. First, stances on the mind–body problem (identity theory, functionalism, and heuristic identity theory) are relevant to cognitive science as it negotiates its relation to neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience. Second, analyses of mental representations address both their vehicles and their contents; new approaches to characterizing how representations have content are particularly relevant to understanding the relation of cognitive agents to their environments. Third, the recently formulated accounts of mechanistic explanation in philosophy of science both provide perspective on the explanatory project of cognitive science and may offer normative guidance to cognitive science (e.g., by providing perspective on how multiple disciplinary perspectives can be integrated in understanding a given mechanism).

The notion of levels has been widely used in discussions of cognitive science, especially in discussions of the relation of connectionism to symbolic modeling of cognition. I argue that many of the notions of levels employed are problematic for this purpose, and develop an alternative notion grounded in the framework of mechanistic explanation. By considering the source of the analogies underlying both symbolic modeling and connectionist modeling, I argue that neither is likely to provide an adequate analysis of processes at the level at which cognitive theories attempt to function: One is drawn from too low a level, the other from too high a level. If there is a distinctly cognitive level, then we still need to determine what are the basic organizational principles at that level.

Connectionism provides hope for unifying work in neuroscience, computer science, and cognitive psychology. This promise has met with some resistance from Classical Computionalists, which may have inspired Connectionists to retaliate with bold, inflationary claims on behalf of Connectionist models. This paper demonstrates, by examining three intimately connected issues, that these inflationary claims made on behalf of Connectionism are wrong. This should not be construed as an attack on Connectionism, however, since the inflated claims made on its behalf have the look of cures for which there are no ailments. There is nothing wrong with Connectionism for its failure to solve illusory problems.