COGC91H3 Lecture : PHLB86 Lecture - what is cognitive science?
28 Jan 2012
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A doctrine (main issues: artificial intelligence, computational theories of mind) Cognitive science has been around in name since about 1978, however haugeland believes hobbes may have started it ( reasoning is but reckoning ). Metaphysical challenge: we have difficulty attributing mental states/experiences to material stuff given qualitative differences we have a hard time thinking of the mind in terms of physical things. The unobservability of the mental: we can only experience our own mental states, not those of other people imposes a significant constraint on any objective state of mind. We can assume/make comparisons based on behavior and what would cause ourselves to behave in that way, but we cannot experience it or know for sure. These challenges, and others, sufficed to dissuade most philosophers/scientists from taking seriously a computational understanding of thought until recently. However, cognitive science is still not problem free.
