Origins of Cognitive Science
“Cognitive science is about the same age as rock and roll” (Paul Thagard)
1910-1960 (especially U.S.): dominance of behaviorism
By 1965, a series of developments had overcome that dominance
Pre-War Psychology: Tolman and Lashley
Mathematics: Turing, Communication theory
Linguistics: Chomsky
Post-War Psychology: Cognitive theory
Basic Principle of Behaviorism
Rejection of mentalism:
(Mentalism involves an appeal to thoughts and desires to explain behavior, the use of introspection to study conscious mental experience, and dependence upon verbal reports
“The ideal of most scientific men is to explain behavior in terms of matter and energy, so that the introduction of psychic implications is considered superfluous” H. S. Jennings, 1906
Rejection of Behaviorism
The cognitive turn in psychology (away from behaviorism)
A return to the psychology of William James
“Psychology is the Science of Mental Life, both of its phenomena and their conditions. The phenomena are such things as we call feelings, desires, cognitions, reasonings, and the like.” James, 1890
The Demise of Behaviorism
Latent learning : the idea of noticing and storing information
Place learning : the idea of information specifically about the environment (rather than the organism’s own movements)
Lashley’s hierarchical analysis of behavior
Language : the idea of hierarchical, rather than serial, organization
The Central Role of Information
The idea that the senses are information-processing channels with limited capacity
Selective attention studies: something that needs to be explained with an information-processing model
Theories of computation – a viable model of how information-processing works
Turing clarified the formal notions of algorithm and computation
Origins of Cognitive Science
Developments in the theory of computation and theory of information
Development of information-processing models of cognitive capacities and abilities
The idea that information-processing is a computational process