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What Happens to Accounts of Mind-Brain Relations If We Forego An Architecture of Rules and Representations?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 January 2023

William Bechtel
William Bechtel*
Affiliation:
Georgia State University
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Extract

While some philosophers have assumed that there are only two options for characterizing the ontological status of mental models in cognitive information processing psychology--treating them as nearly autonomous from theories of brain activity (Putnam 1975 and Fodor 1974) or eliminating them in favor of neuroscience accounts (Churchland 1979)-- cognitive scientists have often tacitly assumed a third option. This involves treating the mental models as systems of rules and representations that are instantiated in the nervous system much in the way computer programs are instantiated in computers. While this seems to be the position of those endorsing the autonomy of psychology, it, in fact is consistent with a much weaker interpretation if one recognizes that the vehicle in which mental processes or computer programs are instantiated may limit and constrain what kinds of mental processes or computer programs can be instantiated.

Type
Part III. Psychology
Information
PSA: Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association , Volume 1986 , Issue 1: Volume One: Contributed Papers 1986 , 1986 , pp. 157 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1986

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Footnotes

1

I thank Adele Abrahamsen, James Frame, Robert Richardson, and Robert McCauley for their very helpful comments on earlier drafts of this paper and many discussions of these topics. Work on this paper was supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities and- a Georgia State University Research Grant.

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