The possibility of a pluralist cognitive science
Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial IntelligencePublished 14 August 2008
Rick Dale
Citations66
SJR quartileQ2
SJR score0.54
SNIP0.86
Generate an AI Snapshot to get a quick, structured summary of this paper.
Study Snapshot
ObjectiveStudy objective
MethodsResearch methodology
PopulationPopulation studied
Sample sizeSample sizes
OutcomesStudy outcomes here
ResultsStudy results comes here
LimitationsResearch study limitations comes here
A concise AI-generated summary of the paper will appear here once you click Generate AI Snapshot.
TL;DR
A case for a pluralistic approach to cognitive science is sketched, and research strategies recommended by this approach are discussed, with review of research currently carrying out such strategies and others that may hold promise for the future.
Abstract
A case for a pluralistic approach to cognitive science is sketched. It is argued that cognitive scientists should take seriously the possibility that a single, unified framework for all of cognition is an unrealistic expectation for its diverse interdisciplinary goals and subject matter. A pluralistic approach instead seeks ways of integrating the multiple perspectives that have provided explanatory success in loosely interconnected sub-domains of cognitive phenomena. Research strategies recommended by this approach are discussed, with review of research currently carrying out such strategies and others that may hold promise for the future. The article ends with a discussion of seeking closer integration of the inquirer into consideration of which explanatory framework to choose. A systematic exploration of this transactional approach to cognitive science may grant coherence to pluralism even as it embraces diverse schemes of explanation.
Keywords
Decision SciencesArts and HumanitiesNeuroscience
The MIT Press eBooksParallel Distributed Processing
15,227 Citations1986David E. Rumelhart, James L. McClelland +1 more
Psychological ReviewA solution to Plato's problem: The latent semantic analysis theory of acquisition, induction, and representation of knowledge.
6,039 Citations1997Thomas K. Landauer, Susan Dumais
A new general theory of acquired similarity and knowledge representation, latent semantic analysis (LSA), is presented and used to successfully simulate such learning and several other psycholinguistic phenomena.
Artificial IntelligenceIntelligence without representation
4,625 Citations1991Rodney A. Brooks
The fundamental decomposition of the intelligent system is not into independent information processing units which must interface with each other via representations, but into independent and parallel activity producers which all interface directly to the world through perception and action.
The Language of Thought
4,162 Citations1978Jerry A. Fodor
Academy of Management ReviewHeuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment
3,600 Citations2004William P. Bottom, Thomas Gilovich +2 more
Computers & Mathematics with ApplicationsA dynamic systems approach to the development of cognition and action
3,480 Citations1996Thelen, Esther, Smith, Linda B.
The MIT Press eBooksA Dynamic Systems Approach to the Development of Cognition and Action
3,430 Citations1994Esther Thelen, Linda B. Smith
Durham Research Online (Durham University)How the Laws of Physics Lie
2,959 Citations1983Nancy Cartwright
Choice Reviews OnlineAt home in the universe: the search for laws of self-organization and complexity
2,902 Citations1996
Computers & Mathematics with ApplicationsDynamic patterns: The self-organization of brain and behavior
2,861 Citations1997
Artificial IntelligenceSOAR: An architecture for general intelligence
2,396 Citations1987John E. Laird, Allen Newell +1 more
SOAR, an implemented proposal for a foundation for a system capable of general intelligent behavior, is presented and its organizational principles, the system as currently implemented, and demonstrations of its capabilities are described.
Psychology Press eBooksThe Atomic Components of Thought
2,178 Citations2014John R. Anderson, Christian Lebière
The preface to the book describes how C.R. Anderson's Cognitive Arithmetic transformed into Knowledge Representation and how M. Lovett's choice changed the way that people viewed the world around them.
Cambridge University Press eBooksHeuristics and Biases
2,115 Citations2002Thomas Gilovich, Thomas Gilovich +25 more
How the Laws of Physics Lie
2,095 Citations1983Nancy Cartwright
The MIT Press eBooksRethinking Innateness
1,483 Citations1996Jeffrey L. Elman, Elizabeth Bates +4 more
Choice Reviews OnlineThe disorder of things: metaphysical foundations of the disunity of science
1,395 Citations1993
Behavioral and Brain SciencesThe dynamical hypothesis in cognitive science
1,336 Citations1998Tim van Gelder
Trends in Cognitive SciencesThe cognitive revolution: a historical perspective
1,275 Citations2003George A. Miller
By then, it was becoming clear in several disciplines that the solution to some of their problems depended crucially on solving problems traditionally allocated to other disciplines, and collaboration was called for.
Journal of Cognitive NeuroscienceDynamic Patterns: The Self-Organization of Brain and Behavior
1,251 Citations1996A. John Van Opstal
Thank you very much for reading dynamic patterns the self organization of brain and behavior complex adaptive systems, and maybe you have knowledge that, people have search numerous times for their favorite novels but end up in infectious downloads.
The MIT Press eBooksThe Mind Doesn't Work That Way
1,206 Citations2000Jerry A. Fodor
Jerry Fodor argues against the widely held view that mental processes are largely computations, that the architecture of cognition is massively modular, and that the explanation of the authors' innate mental structure is basically Darwinian.
Trends in Cognitive SciencesThe past and future of the past tense
943 Citations2002Steven Pinker, Michael T. Ullman
This work defends the theory that irregular past-tense forms are stored in the lexicon, a division of declarative memory, whereas regular forms can be computed by a concatenation rule, which requires the procedural system.
Elsevier eBooksYOU CAN'T PLAY 20 QUESTIONS WITH NATURE AND WIN: PROJECTIVE COMMENTS ON THE PAPERS OF THIS SYMPOSIUM
804 Citations1973Allen Newell
Physica D Nonlinear PhenomenaThe calculi of emergence: computation, dynamics and induction
770 Citations1994James P. Crutchfield
An overview of an inductive framework-hierarchical ϵ-machine reconstruction—in which the emergence of complexity is associated with the innovation of new computational model classes is presented, along with an analysis of the constraints on the dynamics of innovation.
Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesThe Theory of Everything
726 Citations2000R. B. Laughlin, David Pines
This talk discusses recent developments in the understanding of matter, broadly construed, and their implications for contemporary research in fundamental physics.
Journal of Experimental Psychology GeneralSelf-organization of cognitive performance.
718 Citations2003Guy C. Van Orden, John G. Holden +1 more
Two experiments demonstrate 1/f scaling (pink noise) in simple reaction times and speeded word naming times, which round out a catalog of laboratory task demonstrations that background noise is pink noise.
‘Downward Causation’ in Hierarchically Organised Biological Systems
702 Citations1974Donald T. Campbell
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & PerformanceMutual interpersonal postural constraints are involved in cooperative conversation.
676 Citations2003Kevin Shockley, Marie-Vee Santana +1 more
Pairs of participants were found to share more locations in phase space (greater recurrence) in conditions where they were conversing with one another to solve a puzzle task than in conditions in which they convened with others.
Journal of the Learning SciencesComplex Systems in Education: Scientific and Educational Importance and Implications for the Learning Sciences
664 Citations2006Michael J. Jacobson, Uri Wilensky
The Algebraic Mind: Integrating Connectionism and Cognitive Science
636 Citations2001Gary Marcus
Gary Marcus outlines a variety of ways in which neural systems could be organized so as to manipulate symbols, and he shows why such systems are more likely to provide an adequate substrate for language and cognition than neural systems that are inconsistent with the manipulation of symbols.
Choice Reviews OnlineDiscovery and explanation in biology and medicine
607 Citations1994
The scientific books will also be the best reason to choose, especially for the students, teachers, doctors, businessman, and other professions who are fond of reading.
Trends in Cognitive SciencesRules or connections in past-tense inflections: what does the evidence rule out?
596 Citations2002James L. McClelland, Karalyn Patterson
Evidence supports all three connectionist predictions: gradual acquisition of the past tense inflection; graded sensitivity to phonological and semantic content; and a single, integrated mechanism for regular and irregular forms, dependent jointly on phonology and semantics.
IEEE Transactions on Neural NetworksNeural Engineering: Computation, Representation, and Dynamics in Neurobiological Systems
561 Citations2004
Neural ComputationA Robot that Walks; Emergent Behaviors from a Carefully Evolved Network
549 Citations1989Rodney A. Brooks
Philosophy of ScienceMultiple Realizability Revisited: Linking Cognitive and Neural States
482 Citations1999William Bechtel, Jennifer Mundale
The MIT Press eBooksThe Complementary Nature
434 Citations2006J. A. Scott Kelso, David A. Engstrøm
The Complementary Nature argues that ubiquitous contraries are complementary and proposes a comprehensive, empirically based scientific theory of how the polarized world and the world in between can be reconciled, and nominates the tilde, or squiggle, as the symbolic punctuation for reconciled complementary pairs.
Choice Reviews OnlineMind: introduction to cognitive science
425 Citations1997Paul Thagard
With Mind, Paul Thagard offers an introduction to cognitive science for readers who come to the subject with very different backgrounds, suitable for classroom use by students with interests ranging from computer science and engineering to psychology and philosophy.
Choice Reviews OnlineThe end of science: facing the limits of knowledge in the twilight of the scientific age
415 Citations1996
In a time where scientific rationality is under fire from every quarter, THE END of SCIENCE is a witty, thoughtful, profound and entertaining narrative which serves as both a critique of and a homage to modern science.
Proceedings of the National Academy of SciencesThe middle way
403 Citations2000R. B. Laughlin, David Pines +3 more
Mesoscopic organization in soft, hard, and biological matter is examined in the context of the present understanding of the principles responsible for emergent organized behavior at long wavelengths in very large aggregations of particles.
Choice Reviews OnlineContemporary debates in cognitive science
366 Citations2007
This book argues that cognitive science has shown that human beings are cognitively bounded, or irrational, and that mental states, knowledge in particular, be into a narrow component and a broad component.
Cambridge University Press eBooksBiological Complexity and Integrative Pluralism
363 Citations2003Sandra D. Mitchell
DigitalGeorgetown (Georgetown University Library)Essays on Life Itself
351 Citations1999Robert Rosén
This book discusses biological challenges to Contemporary Paradigms of Physics and Mimetics, as well as some Lessons of Biology and Technology, and the philosophy of Craft.
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & PerformanceSymmetry breaking dynamics of human multilimb coordination.
341 Citations1992J. A. Scott Kelso, John J. Jeka
All observed relative phasing patterns and their dynamics are shown to arise from the same underlying nonlinear dynamical structure, an important feature of which is broken symmetry.
Cognition and InstructionA Theory of Algebra-Word-Problem Comprehension and Its Implications for the Design of Learning Environments
338 Citations1992Mitchell J. Nathan, Walter Kintsch +1 more
It is argued that this task is a highly reading-oriented one in which poor text comprehension and an inability to access relevant long-term knowledge lead to serious errors, and poor students often omit from their solutions or misspecify necessary mathematical constraints needed to describe fully the problem situation.
Biology & PhilosophyIntegrative Pluralism
297 Citations2002Sandra D. Mitchell
This paper considers severalphilosophical accounts of scientific pluralism that explain the persistence of both competitive and compatible alternatives and defends anintegrative model for understanding pluralism.
Psychological ScienceAction Dynamics Reveal Parallel Competition in Decision Making
286 Citations2008Chris McKinstry, Rick Dale +1 more
The pull toward contrasting responses duringevaluative thinking is reported for the first time, reporting the results of a study examining the trajectory of participants’ reaching movements toward dif-ferent response options.
Human-Computer InteractionSNIF-ACT: A Cognitive Model of User Navigation on the World Wide Web
275 Citations2007Wai‐Tat Fu, Peter Pirolli
The model was tested against a detailed set of protocol data collected from 8 participants as they engaged in two information-seeking tasks using the World Wide Web and concluded that the combination of the IFT and the BSM provides a good description of user-Web interaction.
Current Directions in Psychological ScienceContinuous Dynamics in Real-Time Cognition
274 Citations2006Michael J. Spivey, Rick Dale
Memory & CognitionGraded motor responses in the time course of categorizing atypical exemplars
263 Citations2007Rick Dale, Caitlin M. Kehoe +1 more
The time course of categorization was investigated in four experiments, which revealed graded competitive effects in a categorization task and carry implications for theories of representation in cognitive science.
The MIT Press eBooksThe MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (MITECS)
259 Citations1999
The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences is a landmark, comprehensive reference work that represents the methodological and theoretical diversity of this changing field and will be an indispensable guide to the current state of the cognitive sciences.
Trends in Cognitive SciencesFolkscience: coarse interpretations of a complex reality
218 Citations2003Frank C. Keil
The rise of appeals to intuitive theories in many areas of cognitive science must cope with a powerful fact that people understand the workings of the world around them in far less detail than they think.
Theory & PsychologyExplanatory Pluralism and Heuristic Identity Theory
218 Citations2001Robert N. McCauley, William Bechtel
ComplexityA mathematical theory of strong emergence using multiscale variety
202 Citations2004Yaneer Bar‐Yam
It is argued conceptually and then demonstrated mathematically that it is possible to define a scientifically meaningful notion of strong emergence, a property of a system that cannot be found in the properties of the system's parts or in the interactions between the parts.
Cognitive ScienceRepresentations and Cognitive Explanations: Assessing the Dynamicist's Challenge in Cognitive Science
199 Citations1998William Bechtel
It is argued that some DST models are better seen as conforming to the covering-law conception of explanation than to the mechanistic conception of explanations implicit in most cognitive science research.
THE LIDA ARCHITECTURE: ADDING NEW MODES OF LEARNING TO AN INTELLIGENT, AUTONOMOUS, SOFTWARE AGENT
194 Citations2006Stan Franklin, W. Harry Feinstone +1 more
The LIDA architecture is a work in progress that is based on IDA, an intelligent, autonomous, "conscious" software agent that does personnel work for the US Navy that uses locally developed cutting edge artificial intelligence technology designed to model human cognition.
Psychonomic Bulletin & ReviewEmbodied relations are encoded in language
192 Citations2008Max M. Louwerse
These findings show that spatial iconicity patterns are reflected in word order patterns and that comprehenders are sensitive to these word order pattern patterns in language-processing tasks.
Cognitive ScienceSpanning seven orders of magnitude: a challenge for cognitive modeling
176 Citations2002John R. Anderson
CogPrints (Cogprints)What is Complexity? - The philosophy of complexity per se with application to some examples in evolution
172 Citations1995Bruce Edmonds
It is proposed that complexity can be only usefully applied to constructions within a given language and that complexity is usefully differentiated from the concepts of size, ignorance, variety, minimum description length and order.
Developmental ScienceConnectionism and dynamic systems: are they really different?
166 Citations2003Esther Thelen, Elizabeth Bates
Journal of Experimental Psychology Human Perception & PerformanceDynamics of representational change: Entropy, action, and cognition.
162 Citations2009Damian G. Kelty‐Stephen, James A. Dixon +1 more
Two studies provide an initial test of the hypothesis that the emergence of new cognitive structure follows the same universal principles as emergence in other domains, and show that increasing environmental entropy accelerated discovery, a classic prediction from dynamics.
Philosophical PsychologyThe third contender: A critical examination of the Dynamicist theory of cognition
150 Citations1996Chris Eliasmith
The dynamicism's relation to symbolicism and connectionism is determined and it is found that the dynamicist goal to establish a new paradigm has yet to be realized.
Toward a Unified Theory of Development: Connectionism and Dynamic Systems Theory Re-Considered
125 Citations2009John P. Spencer, Michael S. C. Thomas +1 more
arXiv (Cornell University)An Exceptionally Simple Theory of Everything
116 Citations2007A. Garrett Lisi
Philosophical PsychologyOn levels of cognitive modeling
106 Citations2005Ron Sun, L. Andrew Coward +1 more
The article addresses the importance of cognitive modeling, in terms of its value to cognitive science, and emphasizes the use of cognitive architectures in this undertaking, as well as the idea of a multi-level approach that ranges from social to neural levels.
PLoS ONEExploring Action Dynamics as an Index of Paired-Associate Learning
87 Citations2008Rick Dale, Jennifer M. Roche +2 more
Results support a graded and systematic covariation between cognition and action, and recommend ways in which this theoretical perspective may contribute to applied learning contexts.
The Psychology of learning and motivation/The psychology of learning and motivationOn the Continuity of Mind: Toward a Dynamical Account of Cognition
86 Citations2004Michael J. Spivey, Rick Dale
This work has shown that not only is stimulation not momentary, but also that there are episodes in the flow that are nested within one another and cannot be cut up into elementary units.
Developmental ScienceThe dynamic lift of developmental process
74 Citations2006Linda B. Smith, Cynthia Breazeal
Three principles potentially essential to building human-like intelligence are considered: the heterogeneity of the component processes, the embedding of development in a social world, and developmental processes that change the cognitive system as a function of the history of soft-assemblies of these heterogeneous processes in specific tasks.
Neural NetworksLearning, action and consciousness: a hybrid approach toward modelling consciousness
72 Citations1997Ron Sun
The paper examines explicit and implicit learning in a variety of psychological experiments and delineates the conscious/unconscious distinction in terms of the two types of learning and their respective products.
A History of Modern Psychology
72 Citations1991Thomas Hardy Leahey
Ecological PsychologySituated Behavior and the Place of Measurement in Psychological Theory
62 Citations2010Guy C. Van Orden, Christopher T. Kello +1 more
Journal of the Learning SciencesThe Complex Systems See-Change in Education
61 Citations2006Robert L. Goldstone
One of the most exciting promises of a complex systems perspective for learning and education, well captured in Jacobson and Wilensky's target article, is to provide a unifying force to bring together increasingly fragmented scientific communities.
Cambridge University Press eBooksProbability Judgment across Cultures
57 Citations2002J. Frank Yates, Ju‐Whei Lee +3 more
CognitionConnectionism and the problem of systematicity (continued): why Smolensky's solution still doesn't work
51 Citations1997J. A. Fodor
Paul Smolensky has recently announced that the problem of explaining the compositionality of concepts within a connectionist framework is solved in principle, and mental representations are vectors over the activity states of connectionist "units", but the vectors encode Classical trees.
The Plurality of Science
46 Citations1993Patrick Suppes
Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial IntelligenceFrom apples and oranges to symbolic dynamics: a framework for conciliating notions of cognitive representation
43 Citations2005Rick Dale, Michael J. Spivey
Symbolic dynamics is a mathematical framework in which both continuous and discrete states of a system can be considered jointly and may serve as a common, level playing field for debate in theories of cognitive representation.
Philosophical PsychologyLevels of explanation in biological psychology
40 Citations2002Huib Looren de Jong
American Psychological Association eBooksPsychologists defying the crowd: Stories of those who battled the establishment and won.
39 Citations2003
Minds and MachinesThe Compatibility of Complex Systems and Reduction: A Case Analysis of Memory Research
39 Citations2001William Bechtel
It is argued that reduction, an approach to explanation that decomposes complex activities and localizes the components within the complex system, is not only compatible with an emphasis on complexity, but provides the foundation for dynamical analysis.
Phenomena and mechanisms: Putting the symbolic, connectionist, and dynamical systems debate in broader perspective
33 Citations2006Adele Abrahamsen, William Bechtel
This volume on contemporary debates in cognitive science includes two issues of architecture, each articulated in the 1980s but still unresolved: cognitive mechanisms and architecture.
A Complex-Systems Perspective on the “Computation vs. Dynamics” Debate in Cognitive Science
33 Citations2022Melanie Mitchell
Towards Incorporating Visual Imagery into a Cognitive Architecture
27 Citations2007Scott D. Lathrop
The Soar cognitive architecture is extended to support the construction, transformation, generation, and inspection of visual representations for general problem solving and initial results from two domains are discussed.
eScholarship (California Digital Library)Multimodal Communication in Computer-Mediated Map Task Scenarios
16 Citations2006Mohammed Ehsan Hoque, Patrick Jeuniaux +3 more
Light is shed on multimodal communication in humans and guidelines for implementation in animated conversational agents are given, showing that eye gaze, facial expression and pauses correlate at certain points in the discourse and that these points can be identified by the speaker's intentions behind the dialog moves.
Predicate projection in a bimodal spatial reasoning system
15 Citations2007Samuel Wintermute, John E. Laird
This work defines an expressive language for predicate projection that supports general and flexible image creation and demonstrates this system on multiple spatial reasoning problems in the ORTS real-time strategy game environment.
Ecological PsychologyTheoretical Hubris and the Willingness To Be Radical: An Open Letter to James J. Gibson
9 Citations2002Robert E. Shaw
Physical Review ETopographic voltage and coherence mapping of brain potentials by means of the symbolic resonance analysis
8 Citations2005Peter beim Graben, Stefan Frisch +3 more
It is shown that topographic brain maps of the optimal threshold voltages and of their associated coherence differences are able to dissociate the underlying physiological processes, while corresponding maps gained from the customary voltage averaging technique are unable to do so.
Trends in Cognitive SciencesAre psychology's tribes ready to form a nation?
5 Citations2002Daniel T. Gilbert
Scientists from each discipline are using the theories and techniques of the other to generate new answers to fundamental questions about attitudes, beliefs, the self, moral judgment, and other issues.
Dynamical assessment of symbolic processes with backprop nets
5 Citations2002Whitney Tabor
The results indicate a link between the traditional use of stack-memories to create complex computation and dynamical treatments of complexity based on trajectory divergence.
…