Two important components of Fodor's philosophy of cognitive science rely heavily upon ceteris paribus laws, thus requiring that Fodor forward an analysis of ceteris paribus laws. First, because Fodor has long held (1975, 1990) that all of the laws of the special sciences are ceteris paribus laws, he must demonstrate the scientific legitimacy of ceteris paribus laws. Second, ceteris paribus laws play a prominent role in Fodor's most recent (1990) theory of representational content, and solution to the “disjunction problem,” a well-known problem for his approach. Fodor recently (1991a) offered an analysis of ceteris paribus laws for the special sciences (particularly cognitive science). I ask two questions with regard to Fodor's analysis: Does the analysis underwrite Fodor's theory of representation? Does the analysis provide adequate solutions to the problems for ceteris paribus laws as articulated by Hempel (1965, 1988) and Giere (1988)? I answer both questions negatively.

All of us defer to the authority of experts. Living in a world of increasing specialization we find that deferral to experts is integral to even the most mundane habits of our ordinary life. I regularly complain about mistakes in meteorologist's forecasts, yet I still carry an umbrella when rain is predicted, even when a glance outside reveals that there is not a cloud in the sky. If I develop a rash on my arm and the doctor says that it is nothing more than an allergic reaction, I do not ask her to list all the evidence and reasoning that led her to that conclusion, but trust her judgment and get on with my day. Now, while we defer to experts as a matter of course, we often do so with a measure of resentment and fear.

If it were possible, I suspect that most of us would rather govern what we do according to our own good reasons rather than expert authority.

It is common practice to reject a justification out-of-hand if the argument that yields the justification is circular. Here are two recent examples. Siegel, criticizing Giere's (1988) proposal for a naturalistic philosophy of science, lists a number of questions about the justification relation between evidence and theory. Siegel then maintains that any attempt to provide a scientific account of this relation must fail:

The aim of contemporary cognitive neuropsychology is to articulate the functional architecture underlying normal human cognitive abilities, on the basis of patterns of performance over a variety of cognitive tasks involving subjects with varying degrees of brain-damage. An example of a contemporary functional architecture is the following model for the recognition and production of spoken and written words:

The modular processing components in this ‘box-and-arrow’ functional architecture represent functionally independent subsystems that perform computational transformations on the representations that originate as input along the connecting links, providing a theory of cognition at the algorithmic and representational level (not the implementational or ‘hardware’ level).

Psychology is a scientific discipline whose universe of discourse is the mind. What could be so controversial about that? Plenty; and (almost) all of the controversy involves questions about the scope of mind. The traditional view on this matter is most closely associated with Descartes. Though Descartes supposed that the mind is essentially nonmaterial, this dualism is not a part of the legacy Descartes left to the modern student of mind. What modern cognitive science has inherited from Descartes is the view that the mind is a private place, separated (in a number of respects) from the body and the environment that lies outside the physical boundries on an individual. There is, however, a rising tide within the philosophy of psychology that seeks to push the boundries of the mind outside the skin (or at least the cranium).

Marr's theory of vision (1982) is often said to exemplify wide psychology. The claim rests primarily on Marr's appeal to a high level theory of computational functions and secondarily on the sort of representations he posits for computational processes (Burge 1986, 28). I agree that Marr's theory embodies an exemplary form of wide psychology; what is exemplary about it is his appeal to perceptual tasks. But I shall argue that the result of invoking task considerations is that we need not adhere to Marr's own restricted construal of proper width. Indeed, the larger conclusion I want to draw is that there is no single conception of width that has a special place in explanation.

The precise nature of the connection between perceptual experience and empirical knowledge is one of the traditional problems of philosophy. That much of our knowledge is somehow based on our perceptual experience has been a common element of many otherwise disparate views as to how beliefs about empirical matters are justified. Although this relationship is now often conceived to be causal rather than logical, it is still rarely doubted that there is some kind of intimate connection between experience and justified belief. Any view of this kind leads quite naturally to the idea that the function of perceptual experience in our epistemic economy is to lead to knowledge of those matters of fact that cause or are represented by that experience. Although I do not wish to deny that this is one epistemic role that experience can play, I will argue below that there are others as well.

David Marr's theory of vision has been a source of both fascination and confusion for many in cognitive science. There has, of course, been substantial technical interest in the particulars of Marr's model. But beyond this we have seen his work cited in debates about the nature of mental representation and computation, the structure of cognition, the role of theoretical knowledge in perception, how and indeed whether one ought to apply results from cognitive science to antecedent questions in epistemology. Marr's theory is cited in such debates because it is widely seen as a successful, rigorous account of a large scale cognitive/perceptual process (if not as the successful such account). But it has been suggested that Marr's theory might be mistaken as a whole; that Marr might have been wrong not just about one or several of the sub-mechanisms of vision, and not just in offering an incomplete account, but wrong in his basic approach to the study of vision.