The Mind's New Science: The History of the Cognitive Revolution

The Greek Agenda and the Meno Dialogue

• The Socratic Inquiry: In Plato’s dialogue, the Meno, Socrates questions a young slave boy regarding geometry. Initially, the boy incorrectly assumes that doubling the sides of a square (from $2$ feet to $4$ feet) results in doubling the area (from $4$ square feet to $8$ square feet). Socrates demonstrates that the boy is confused, as a figure with an area of $8$ square feet must have sides equal to $\sqrt{8}$.

• Geometric Maneuvers: Through Socratic questioning, the boy eventually realizes that a square with $4$-foot sides has an area of $16$ square feet. Socrates then guides him to inscribe a square within the larger one to find the target area of $8$ square feet.

• Theory of Innate Knowledge: Socrates and Plato concluded that the youth possessed this knowledge within his soul from birth. The purpose of instruction is not to provide new information, but to bring "innate knowledge" to conscious awareness. This process suggests that the purest forms of knowledge are idealized forms or archetypes merely glimpsed in mundane reality.

• Foundational Questions: The dialogue serves as the first extended rumination on the nature of knowledge, addressing:

  • Where does knowledge come from?
  • What does knowledge consist of?
  • How is knowledge represented in the human mind?

• Philosophical Tradition: Alfred North Whitehead characterized the European philosophical tradition as a "series of footnotes to Plato." The Greek interest in knowledge reverberated through thinkers such as Aristotle, and later through the Renaissance and Enlightenment periods with scholars like Descartes, Locke, and Kant. Giambattista Vico even proposed a "New Science" (Scienza Nova) to address these matters.

Definition and Scope of Cognitive Science

• Formal Definition: Cognitive science is defined as a contemporary, empirically based effort to answer long-standing epistemological questions concerning the nature of knowledge, its components, its sources, its development, and its deployment.

• Key Focus: Although it can include animate and inanimate knowledge, the term is chiefly applied to explaining human knowledge. It seeks to understand the person who knows, including their perceptual apparatus, mechanisms of learning, memory, and rationality.

• Five Paramount Features of Cognitive Science:

  1. Mental Representations: The belief that human cognitive activity must be described in terms of symbols, rules, images, or schemas. This requires a level of analysis separate from the biological/neurological level and the sociological/cultural level.
  2. The Computer Model: The faith that the electronic computer is the most viable model of how the human mind functions and is indispensable for carrying out studies.
  3. De-emphasis on Complicating Factors: The deliberate decision to de-emphasize affect (emotions), historical/cultural factors, and the role of background context in order to keep the scientific enterprise manageable.
  4. Interdisciplinary Nature: The conviction that a unified cognitive science will emerge from the cross-fertilization of six disciplines: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Anthropology, and Neuroscience.
  5. Rootedness in Western Philosophy: The claim that current cognitive science is a direct continuation of agenda and concerns established by epistemologists in the Western philosophical tradition.

The Hixon Symposium and the Challenge to Behaviorism

• The Meeting: Held in September of $1948$ at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and sponsored by the Hixon Fund, the "Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior" conference brought together eminent scientists to discuss how the nervous system controls behavior.

• Key Speakers and Themes:

  • John von Neumann: Forged a comparison between the electronic computer and the human brain.
  • Warren McCulloch: Presented "Why the Mind Is in the Head," discussing the brain's information processing via logical devices.
  • Karl Lashley: Delivered an iconoclastic address titled "The Problem of Serial Order in Behavior," which challenged the dominant school of behaviorism.

• The Critique of Behaviorism: Behaviorists (such as Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, and Watson) restricted science to public observations and rejected mental constructs like "mind," "imagination," or "intentions." They viewed individuals as passive reflectors of environmental conditioning.

• Lashley’s Counter-Argument: Lashley argued that behaviorism’s "stimulus-response" (linear associative chains) could not explain rapidly unfolding action sequences, such as playing an arpeggio in music or using language.

  • Feedback Limitations: These activities happen too quickly for step-by-step environmental feedback ($A \rightarrow B \rightarrow C$) to be possible.
  • Slips of the Tongue: Speech errors often involve the anticipation of words that occur much later in a sequence, suggesting advance planning.
  • Hierarchical Organization: Lashley proposed that behavior is organized hierarchically by the central nervous system, where overall plans (high nodes) orchestrate fine-grained sequences (lower nodes). Organization emanates from within the organism rather than being imposed from without.

Key Theoretical Inputs to Cognitive Science

• Mathematics and Logic:

  • Gottlob Frege: Developed logic involving abstract symbol manipulation.
  • Russell and Whitehead: Attempted to reduce arithmetic to propositions of elementary logic.

• The Turing Machine: In $1936$, Alan Turing conceived a theoretical machine with an infinite tape and a scanner. It performed four tasks: move right, move left, erase a slash, or print a slash.

  • Implication: If a task can be expressed in binary code ($0$s and $1$s), the machine can execute it.
  • Turing Test ($1950$): A test where a machine is said to "think" if its responses are indistinguishable from those of a human being.

• The Neuronal Model: In $1943$, McCulloch and Pitts modeled the nerve cell (neural network) as a logical device.

  • Binary Operation: Nerves either fire or do not fire, mirroring the all-or-none property of the propositional calculus (true/false).
  • Logic Link: Signals passing through circuits can embody logical implications ($A + B \rightarrow C$).

• The Cybernetic Synthesis: Norbert Wiener coined the term "Cybernetics" in the landmark volume published in $1948$.

  • Purposeful Machines: Wiener argued that machines with feedback are purposeful, striving toward goals by calculating the difference between targets and actual performance.
  • Circular Processes: He described the nervous system not as a linear input-output organ, but as a system of circular processes emerging into muscles and re-entering via sense organs.

• Information Theory: Claude Shannon (M.I.T.) developed information theory during the late $1930$s and $1940$s.

  • The Bit: The basic unit of information (binary digit), defined as the amount of information required to select one message from two equally probable alternatives.
  • Content Neutrality: Information was treated as separate from matter, energy, or specific content, allowing mental processes to be described independently of their physical embodiment.

The Emergence and Institutionalization (1956–1970s)

• The Consensual Birthdate: September 11, 1956: On the second day of the Symposium on Information Theory at M.I.T., three specific papers catalyzed the field:

  • Newell and Simon: The "Logic Theory Machine," providing the first complete proof of a theorem by a computer.
  • Noam Chomsky: "Three Models of Language," arguing that information-theoretical approaches could not account for natural language and introducing linguistic transformations.
  • George Miller: Presented research on short-term memory capacity, defined as approximately $7 \pm 2$ entries.

• Artificial Intelligence (Dartmouth, 1956): Founding fathers John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert Simon met to discuss pattern recognition, game playing, and logical reasoning via computers.

• Key Publications in the 1960s:

  • Plans and the Structure of Behavior (1960): Miller, Pribram, and Galanter proposed the TOTE unit (Test-Operate-Test-Exit) to replace the reflex arc.
  • Cognitive Psychology (1967): Ulric Neisser provided a constructive view of cognition but remained skeptical of oversimplified computer simulations.
  • The Sciences of the Artificial (1969): Herbert Simon described the mind and computer as "symbol systems."

• Institutional Growth: Jerome Bruner and George Miller founded the Harvard Center for Cognitive Studies in $1960$, which became a central hub for interdisciplinary research for over a decade.

The Sloan Initiative and the Cognitive Hexagon

• The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation: In the mid-$1970$s, the foundation committed approximately $15$ to $20$ million dollars to stimulate cognitive science. This led to the founding of the journal Cognitive Science ($1977$) and the Cognitive Science Society ($1979$).

• The State of the Art Report (SOAP, 1978): Drafted by a dozen scholars, it aimed to define the field’s objective as discovering the representational and computational capacities of the mind.

• The Cognitive Hexagon: A diagram representing the interrelations among the six disciplines: Philosophy, Psychology, Artificial Intelligence, Linguistics, Anthropology, and Neuroscience. Unbroken lines denoted strong interdisciplinary ties, while broken lines denoted weak ones.

Current Themes: Paradox and Challenge

• The Computational Paradox: Paradoxically, the rigorous application of computational models has revealed the ways in which human thought is actually not very computer-like. Higher human thought processes (distinctively human) do not easily fit the systematic, rational computational model.

• The Cognitive Challenge: The need for cognitive science to maintain its autonomy while building bridges to its neighboring bounds:

  • Lower Bound: Connecting representational theories to neuroscience.
  • Upper Bound: Connecting individual cognitive processes to cultural and historical studies in anthropology.