Mindcraft is a series of opinion posts on current issues in cognitive science by Brains Blog founder Gualtiero Piccinini. Do you agree? Disagree? Please contribute on the discussion board below! If you’d like to write a full-length response, please contact editor Dan Burnston.
A lot of philosophers still consider themselves philosophers of “cognitive science”.
I stopped using the label “cognitive science” years ago and I invite you to consider doing the same (when reflecting on the scientifc study of the mind). The most recent philosophy journal in this area is aptly called Philosophy and the Mind Sciences. The Philosophy Gourmet Report has switched its area coverage from Philosophy of Cognitive Science to Philosophy of the Psychological, Cognitive, and Brain Sciences. When I co-founded a relevant international society with Inês Hipólito, we called it the International Society for the Philosophy of the Sciences of the Mind.
Why are many of us abandoning the label “cognitive science”?
As Danielle Williams reminded us in her keynote at the Society for Philosophy and Neurosccience, the term “cognitive science” can be traced to a 1978 Sloan Foundation report that tried to establish “cognitive science” as an interdisciplinary collective endeavor analogous to “Neuroscience”. I’m all for interdisciplinary work. But, as far as I can tell, “cognitive science” didn’t work out as envisioned in the 1978 Sloan Foundation report. 47 years later, there are a few “cognitive science” programs, journals, and conferences, but almost no “cognitive science” departments. So, IMO there is no such science as “cognitive science”. There are still departments of Psychology (though their experimental, modeling, and explanatory practices are largely continuous with Cognitive Neuroscience), and there are Neuroscience (which is itself a conglomerate of different disciplines), Psychiatry (which was excluded from the “cognitive hexagon” in the Sloan Foundation report), Anthropology, Linguistics, and Behavioral Biology (which was also excluded from the “cognitive hexagon” in the Sloan Foundation report). So, there are several mind sciences, some of which were included in the Sloan Foundation report’s definition of “cognitive science”, but I don’t see any science that corresponds to the label “Cognitive Science”.
To be more accurate and inclusive, I’ve been using “mind sciences”, but anything more accurate and inclusive than “cognitive science” might also work.
I agree and have been doing the same (sciences of the mind, mind sciences), mainly because cognitive science has (to me) become more closely associated with AI, even if there’s still ‘cognitive psychology’ and related neurosciences. The relation between minds and AI is still far from clear and is contested, so I find this label is inclusive of the contested cases and so allows me to move on to whatever I’m interested in discussing without endorsing a particular view on them.
Glad to hear this! Thanks for sharing.
Terra Cognita is a term that we use whenever there is something we do no know: philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognition, philosophy of neuroscience: in my opinion, philosophy-of is a good prefix. Mind Science, Sciences of the mind are almost synonyms. We have no idea what science is. Is Cognitive Science a Science: we have no idea. Cognitive Studies is a mess. My preference of Philosophy-of prefix may not appeal to many, but one should convince the sceptics by calling attention to the continuum of sciences (Geistes- and Natur-) and humanities. Barring a few, Western thinkers often confuse (they do not really care) about the nuances. The term experimental sciences needs review: there are experimental setups on either grounds.
“Philosophy-of (X)” means a second-order inquiry, and I see no reason to call it ‘something we don’t know’. I believe we need to know X before embarking upon the second order inquiry, which is obtained by taking a step back and reflecting on what we have been doing under X (say, cooking as a chef) and what it means, its fundamentals, fundamental assumptions, and then gradually, with maturity, we start understanding its fundamental nature, and then we may bring some radical changes in it once we understand its fundamental nature, if there are certain developments later on contradictory or incoherent to its fundamental nature.
I don’t think we from immaturity to maturity in the alleged first-order enquiry. Many philosophers are brain-washed to subscribe to this dogma. It is first-order enquiry when language becomes the urgent need to concern as in Carruthers and Millikan.
Thank you my goodness to have your reply!
But surely the term “mind” comes with even more baggage and lack of clarity and agreement as to what it is.
It is very difficult to speak to radically empirical entities like physicians and, for the most part, attorneys and solicit the use of words like philosophy, mind and now cognition in making arguments that require the use of demonstrative evidence.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQaN5w3YwtM. This you tube demonstration is typical of the response of the radical empiricist. They pull out the brain itself and display the entire construct of nerves and the nervous system. It is this kind of evidence that is needed if neuroscience is to become and remain a relevant entity in controlling social entities like the law. Cognition is still a functional term to use because in the practice of the recognition of ideas the law relies on the logical relation between antecedent facts and the eventual legal conclusion. The use of fMRI is compelling but it is not yet dispositive although progress his being made is supplying hard evidence for this thing called cognition. Vaporous categories like mind, philosophy and the like take a back seat to testable, demonstrative evidence that displays the physical mechanisms of this thing called cognition. The law is yearning to possess this information as it specializes in conceptual matters like causation and production in the exercise of it’s vast influence on other social entities like neuroscience.
Cognitive Science, as I understand the term, strives to understand ‘mind’ or ‘how we think’ (maybe it’s a simplistic characterisation, but I think it’s better to start with something very fundamental, and often that comes out ‘simple’). Now there can be two kinds of minds, in modern times (with the advent of AI tools like ChatGPT) – the ‘human’ mind, and the ‘machine’ mind. Both have got intelligence, so I distinguish ‘human intelligence’ from’machine intelligence’. Under ‘intelligence’, we just want to solve a problem, no matter what the mechanism is. And I think, despite certain common processes, the two involve quite different mechanisms. Now, we are philosophers, and usually remain concerned with the human mind and its suffering (so psychiatry is our concern), its ability to acquire knowledge, valid knowledge (education is our concern). This means concern with those cognitive mechanisms which operate for human mind, not for machine-intelligence or AI.
If I have a horse and it gets sick, I don’t apply mechanisms of how a car runs, though both serve the same function – fast transportation, and even if the car is much more efficient! The issue is of relevance, not efficiency. Function doesn’t exhaust relevance…
Having said above, I see no problem if we call it ‘mind sciences’ or ‘human-cognitive science’ (with the qualifier ‘human’) and include any kind of discipline in this endeavor – psychology, neuroscience, anthropology, life sciences, and even physics, and not computer science – in my view (for the reasons I have pointed out above already).
I think equating what the mind does with “thinking” is under-representative of its operations, especially if we take the mind as an aspect of brain functioning. Coming from phenomenological studies myself, but witnessing it also in other cognitive approaches, it seems to me evident that we find a wide variety of activities- of which propositionally formatted thinking is only one part, and explicit, reflective propositional thought an even narrower subset- that we include in what minds are, and do. For similar reasons, speaking of human-cognitive science looks to me reductive: many pre-propositional dynamics are plausibly shared across species, certainly among many mammals and, even more clearly, among nonhuman primates- marking a clear boundaries between “Minds” and what you here maybe are indexing as rationality.
With that in mind, I’d make at least two point about this comment and in general about the “mind and brain sciences” idea:
1- Interest in what minds are and do should not be equated with fully developed reflective rationality; otherwise we risk a picture that leaves aside much of what minds can, and in fact do.
2- Phenomenology, as a theory of consciousness, can—i.e., it seems to me it should—be counted among the mind sciences, as it examines what minds can do by situating their functioning within experience itself, guiding the constitution of workable hypothesis that can extend and enrich our understanding of cognitive explananda.
But what is a ‘mind’? Not ‘what does it do and how does it come about’, but does such a ‘thing’ exist? Isn’t it just a term that ‘us hoomans’ have invented (a ‘model’) to try to describe and understand a set of processes. That doesn’t mean it actually exists as an entity. By trying to define what a mind really is, aren’t we engaging on ‘how many angels can dance on the head of a pin’ discussions?
The Mind (as a noun) Is Dead.
Is Functionalism a genuine account of human cognition?
I believe it has been a distraction from the real human cognitive science, and has contributed nothing in terms of advancing fundamental knowledge of the “human” mind, and its concerns like psychiatry and education. The time is to identify these aspects and move towards the “embodied cognitive science”, which may have its own limitations or challenges, but at least it seems to be directed in the right direction.
What do others think? Criticisms and comments invited!