Mechanical mind

Princeton University philosophy professor Gilbert Harman reviews the book: Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science, by Margaret A. Boden.

The term cognitive science, which gained currency in the last half of the 20th century, is used to refer to the study of cognition -- cognitive structures and processes in the mind or brain, mostly in people rather than, say, rats or insects. Cognitive science in this sense has reflected a growing rejection of behaviorism in favor of the study of mind and "human information processing. The field includes the study of thinking, perception, emotion, creativity, language, consciousness and learning. Sometimes it has involved writing (or at least thinking about) computer programs that attempt to model mental processes or that provide tools such as spreadsheets, theorem provers, mathematical-equation solvers and engines for searching the Web. The programs might involve rules of inference or "productions," "mental models," connectionist "neural" networks or other sorts of parallel "constraint satisfaction" approaches. Cognitive science so understood includes cognitive neuroscience, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and artificial life; conceptual, linguistic and moral development; and learning in humans, other animals and machines."

Among those sometimes identifying themselves as cognitive scientists are philosophers, computer scientists, psychologists, linguists, engineers, biologists, medical researchers and mathematicians. Some individual contributors to the field have had expertise in several of these more traditional disciplines. An excellent example is the philosopher, psychologist and computer scientist Margaret Boden, who founded the School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences at the University of Sussex and is the author of a number of books, including Artificial Intelligence and Natural Man (1977) and The Creative Mind (1990). Boden has been active in cognitive science pretty much from the start and has known many of the other central participants.

In her latest book, the lively and interesting Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science, the relevant machine is usually a computer, and the cognitive science is usually concerned with the sort of cognition that can be exhibited by a computer. Boden does not discuss other aspects of the subject, broadly conceived, such as the "principles and parameters" approach in contemporary linguistics or the psychology of heuristics and biases. Furthermore, she also puts to one side such mainstream developments in computer science as data mining and statistical learning theory. In the preface she characterizes the book as an essay expressing her view of cognitive science as a whole, a "thumbnail sketch" meant to be "read entire" rather than "dipped into."

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