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On Wittgenstein on Cognitive Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

D. Proudfoot
D. Proudfoot
Affiliation:
University of Canterbury
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Extract

Cognitive science is held, not only by its practitioners, to offer something distinctively new in the philosophy of mind. This novelty is seen as the product of two factors. First, philosophy of mind takes itself to have well and truly jettisoned the ‘old paradigm’, the theory of the mind as embodied soul, easily and completely known through introspection but not amenable to scientific inquiry. This is replaced by the ‘new paradigm’, the theory of mind as neurally-instantiated computational mechanism, relatively opaque to introspection and the proper subject of detailed empirical investigation. Second, in the constitutive disciplines of cognitive science (cognitive psychology, neuroscience, computer science etc.) we have for the first time the theoretical, experimental and technological resources to begin this investigation. My concern here is to show that, despite its scientific and philosophical sophistication, the new (computational) paradigm is in certain striking ways very similar to the old paradigm and that Wittgenstein's criticisms of the former apply to much of the latter.

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Articles
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Philosophy , Volume 72 , Issue 280 , April 1997 , pp. 189 - 217
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1997

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References

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19 This claim was first made to me by Paul Thistoll.

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33 It does not follow from this that ordinary talk of ‘mental processes’ is misguided, since according to Wittgenstein such talk does not imply the philosopher's or psychologist's theoretical commitment to inner processes (see below). (‘And now it looks as if we had denied mental processes. And naturally we don't want to deny them.’ (PI §308)) Cf. Wittgenstein's account of sensation-terms; although for Wittgenstein these are not referring expressions, we can explain the meaning of ‘pain’ by ‘pricking him with a pin and saying: “See, that's what pain is!”’ (PI §288).

34 See e.g. Leiber, , op. cit. for the claim that Wittgenstein's explanations are proto-scientific and thus that the cognitive scientist's inquiry is simply the extension of Wittgenstein's appeal to natural history.Google Scholar

35 Dennett, D. C., ‘Intentional Systems’, Journal of Philosophy 68, No. 4 (1971), 87–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36 See Proudfoot, D., ‘Robots and Rule-Following’, forthcoming.Google Scholar

37 I am indebted to B. J. Copeland for illuminating discussion in the preparation of this paper and to P. M. S. Hacker for his helpful comments on an earlier version.