Philosophy and Cognitive Science

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Philosophy and Cognitive Science

• Philosophy has an unusual status in Cognitive
  Science its always included as one of the
  component disciplines, but its role is not
  always clear.
• Philosophers are not typically involved in
  experimental work or the modeling of data.

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Other Possibilities

• -Science writing, explaining results from
  cognitive science in laypersons terms
• -More importantly, showing how results in
  cognitive science might bear on traditional
  philosophical questions (about the mind, the
  self, nativism, empiricism...)

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• Theoretical contributions to cognitive science
• (a) formulating conceptual frameworksnew
  theories, concepts, etc.--that motivate empirical
  work
• (b) examining and proposing explanations of the
  basic concepts that empirical researchers
  sometimes appeal to (for example, of
  representation or causation).

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Situated Cognition

• One view of cognition that many in the situated
  camp oppose
• --Input
• --tons of problem-solving processing
• --then output
• Think of programs that play chess or tic, tac,
  toe or that solve the tower of Hanoi problem

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Another style of cognition

• Consider a highly interactive process, such as
  driving or playing a real-time video game.
• There is an ongoing interdependence. The driver
  continuously changes the car through the wheel
  the car continuously acts on the driver, changing
  what the driver does.

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In between

• -use of pencil and paper or calculator to solve
  math problems
• -use of computer to write papers
• -past interaction to shape current abilities

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Situated Cognition A disjointed field

• -Embedded cognition human cognitive processing
  depends heavily on the use of external resources
• -Extended cognition human cognitive processes
  (or the human cognitive system) literally include
  portions of the external environment

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• Embodied cognition Fine-grained properties of
  the physical body play an especially important
  role in cognitive processing. Often emphasizes
  the role of sensory and motor processes in
  cognition.