Conceptual Models, Inquiry and the Problem of Deriving Normative Claims from a Naturalistic Base

Abstract

John Dewey, in chapter ten of The Quest for Certainty, writes: "The problem of restoring integration and cooperation between man's beliefs about the world in which he lives and his beliefs about the values and purposes that should direct his conduct is the deepest problem of modern life". In cognitive science the problem plays itself out in the move from a description of what people such as scientists have done and how they reason, to claims about how science ought to be conducted and how scientists ought to reason. In this paper I will, adopting a broadly pragmatist account of cognitive inquiry, examine what sorts of processes go on in reasoning and scientific discovery, within a broadly connectionist framework. On such an account, the normative element of cognitive science results from understanding that inquiry is an activity of embodied, socially situated agents, and that model-based reasoning dynamically reflects this.