The Cognitive View in Cognitive Science

I believe that there are only a select few topics, which arouse a
similar level of interest and curiosity among academics and laymen
alike, as does the study of mind and brain. Although mind and brain
have been capturing the attention of philosophers for centuries, it
is the "scientific investigation" of age old philosophical queries
by socalled cognitive scientists, which is distinctive of the
developments of the last few decades and which, in times to come,
may well be considered the hallmark of the study of mind in the
20th and early 21st centuries. In the past, advances in the natural
sciences underlay or boosted a plethora of developments in the
technological, economic and political spheres that not only
improved the standard of living and prolonged the average life span
for a vast number of people, but also fuelled hopes that a new and
improved understanding of the nature of man was also within reach.
Despite all the benefits mankind derived from scientific and
technological progress past and present, the success of the natural
sciences also helped spread and foster a virulent and nowadays
quasi-ubiquitous and unquestioned believe in the omnipotence of
science and technology. In the context of the study of mind, in
particular, it fostered the widespread (mis-)conception that in
order for an investigation leading to insight and understanding a
"scientific" approach is a sine qua non. This thesis highlights the
danger of such an approach. By investigating the framework of
explanation adopted by cognitive scientists, the cognitive view,
and by examining its inherent conceptions of mind and thought, it
will be shown that the scientific, or rather scientistic, approach
inherent in the views depicted above is highly questionable, and in
the case of the study of mind and brain, does not further insight
and understanding, but rather prevents it. In the 20th century,
Ludwig Wittgenstein has been one of the few philosophers who
recognized the fallaciousness of these ideas and who opposed the
inherent scientism. His later philosophy, which provides the
philosophical mise en scène for the following investigations,
provides a much-needed antidote against the misconceptions common
among cognitive scientists today. Although, many of the
shortcomings of the ideas and views of cognitive scientists have,
with a certain regularity, been discussed by philosophers working
in the tradition of the later Wittgenstein (e.g. Kenny, Hanfling,
Hacker, Hyman and Glock) their criticisms, more often than not,
fell on deaf ears. I believe that one of the main reasons
underlying the imperviousness of the community of cognitive
scientists to the criticism of the kind of analytic philosophy
inspired by the later Wittgenstein, is that it mainly focused on
select misconceptions inherent in the cognitive view, but regularly
failed to point out their place in the overall framework of thought
for cognitive scientists. As a result, it was easy to dismiss these
criticisms with excuses of the sort "but that does not bear any
direct relevance to the work I do ...". For this reason, this
thesis aimed to portray and examine the cognitive view in its
entirety, i.e. to depict the intricate interconnections existing
between the premises that provide the foundation of the cognitive
view, and to point out their disastrous consequences for our
understanding not only of a select view aspects of mental
phenomena, but to our understanding of the mind (and consequently
of human nature) in its entirety. In order to provide such a "big
picture", and to describe the numerous often very subtle
interconnections between the various ideas making up the cognitive
view in all their breadth and depth, a lot of well-trodden ground
had to be revisited and reviewed. Thus, Anthony Kenny's and Peter
Hackers' discussions of the mereological fallacy (Chapter 3,
Chapter 4 first half) will provide the "base camp" from which we
will visit less familiar aspects of the cognitive view via novel
routes on our way to the peak of this "philosophical mountain".
Where required, my indebtedness to the works of these philosophers
will be highlighted throughout the text.