Theoretical problems of cognitive science

Abstract

Aspects of the controversy concerning the theoretical status of some recent thinking on human cognition are discussed; in particular, the concept of ‘unconscious knowledge’, the ‘functionalist’ analysis of the mental; the problem of the domains of explananda, given the recalcitrant difficulty in providing warrantable and generalizable criteria for individuating components of an organism’s ‘behavior’; the problem of the polymorphous character of various mental predicates and their misconceived treatment as ‘state’ or ‘process’ descriptors; the possible ‘over- intellectualizing’ of central-nervous-system processes, and the availability of an alternative program for the ‘middle-ground’ between common-sense reasoning and neuroscientific research in the study of ‘mind’. Throughout the discussion, a broadly neo-Wittgensteinian approach is advanced. © 1982 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.