The three time

birth of CogSci
Csaba Pléh
vispleh@ceu.edu

Intoductory lecture at the Topics

IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE
CLASS
CEU, 2019 FALL, SEPTEMBER
18TH
 OVERVIEW
• The external history: multiple births of CogSci. Late 19th, mid 20th and
late 20th century
• Laboratory (Wundt), intentionality (Brentano), conceptual (Frege).

• The mid 20th ‘revolution’. Experimental and theoretical ideas

towards a computational and a representational theory of mind
(Bruner, Miller, Broadbent). The Gardner model of CogSci.
• How drastic was the change?
• Laboratory and philosophical troubles with the computational model.
AI debates, infertility of Platonicism. Moves towards modularity and
developmental issues.
• The way out. Interpreted models of cognition. Neuronal,
evolutionary, and social interpretations.
• Where do we stand now, and where does CEU stand?
 Three traditional (complementary) attitudes
in psychology from an epistemic point of
view
Exclusively internal 1st Person
Internal experience and its coherence TRAD COGSCI

Naturalistic attitude: 3rd person

Internal world is also part of nature.
Physiological and biological explanation

Social and historical constructionism

What is IN, used to be OUT THERE. Interiorization
Three attitudes in the 20th century
history of psychology
KNOWER TRAD COGSCI
Gestalt, cognitive

DOER
FEELER
Behaviorism
FREUD ETC.
Action theories
 The three time birth of CogSci
• 19th end From traditional epistemology to
experimental and formal study of
cognition. Wundt, Brentano, Frege … and
the social models
• From 1956 specific sciences of cognition

• 1980s generic CogSci. First formal, later

interpreted
 The relationship between the
three times
• Descartes and the Brits indeed to start from the
identity of the psychological and the
epistemological subject
• Kant seriously challenged this
• Natural science, however, already in mid19th
goes back to a naturalization of Kant. J. Müller
• This gives birth to experimental psychology and
nativist physiology
• The relations between late 20th century CoGSci
and CogPsych repeat this issue
 Three European traditions as
CUDOS modell
(Merton 1910-2003)
precusors
Communiality
Universality
Disinterest
Organized Scepsis Empirism:
bottom up
bulding

Natural unity:
Rationalism:
Nature and
pure form
mind are one
Characteristics Empiricists Rationalists
Criticism against accepted against accepted
dogmas dogmas
Source of the evidence of intuitions of our own
certainty the senses mind
Ideal of sciencegeneralization on deductive proof
induction
Primary science natural mathematics
observation
 The features of
Cartesianism
• Universalism, a strong belief in universal laws of
nature and the mind.
• Analytic attitude towards knowledge and
learning.
• Separation of body and mind.
• The epistemic Ego as a starting point.
• Postulation of cognition as the essence of the
mental.
• Unified view: all knowledge takes the same
shape.
Some cognitive
aspect of
Descartes
Cogito: reflective
intellect
The primacy of
mathematics and
logic
Common features of
cognition
Separation of body
and mind, BUT
Emotions and
cognition: the role of
the body
 Two Descartes
Characteristics The official The hidden tradition
doctrine

Ontology body and mind body and mind

separate interact

Operations reflex and knowing all mechanics

Mental world innate ideas, ????? unconscious

integrity reflexes, and
reflective geometric
consciousness computations

Place of man unique, two part of the world

substances
The experience as the center
for the empiricists
All ideas come from sensation or reflection. Let us then
suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper, void of
all characters, without any ideas:‑ How comes it to be
furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store which the
busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with
an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the
materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in
one word, from EXPERIENCE. In that all our knowledge
is founded; and from that it ultimately derives itself.
•(Locke Book II., Chapter 1, 2.)
 Kant and the synthesis
• Without the sensuous faculty no object would be
given to us, and without the understanding no
object would be thought. Thoughts without
content are void; intuitions without conceptions,
blind. Hence it is as necessary for the mind to
make its conceptions sensuous (that is, to join to
them the object in intuition), as to make its
intuitions intelligible (that is, to bring them under
conceptions). 
• Kant, Immanuel (1787): The Critique of Pure Reason.  
 The victorious march of
association (D. Rapaport)
Beginning (early End (late 19.
17 century) century)
Association accidental, positive
misleading explanatory
reason has to architectural
fight it concept
1911-1960
Reason, logic basic structure and
fights against logic
accidental are reduced to
associations elements and
associations
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call
myself, I always stumble on some particular perception
or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred,
pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time
without a perception, and never can observe anything
but the perception....
If anyone, upon serious and unprejudiced reflection, thinks
he has a different notion of himself, he may, perhaps,
perceive something simple and continued, which he calls
himself; though I am certain there is no such principle in
me.
 That was not Dennett, but Hume

Treatise on Human Nature, I, IV, sec. 6.

 The empirism-rationalism debates
foreshadow the empirical study of the
mind

Piaget (1968) claims that during the centuries of

debates between the two philosophical systems,
they worked with the implication that there should
be an empirical science of mind. If we compare the
speculative philosophical psychologies to the late
nineteenth century empirical treatises, the striking
difference is their attitude towards experience: the
main obstacle for psychology as a special science
to take place was the overwhelming belief in the
transparency of inner life
 What happens later?
• Late 19th century:
• Natural science of the mind Wundt
• Intentionality Brentano
• Logical study of the mind Frege
• Behaviorist neglect of the Mind
• New cognitive revolution: from the mid
sixtees, two stages: specific disciplines
• CogSci
Why is Wundt so important?
 Methodological shift
• „experimental self
observation”
• In reality Time and
Error patterns
• But the observer and
the inner observer are
separated

• Angelica Deb: this is

certainly a Western
centered image. But I
Role divisions in early experiments
 Brentano (1838-1916): a
passionate life for pure science
• Würzburg, 1866-
1873: Aristotelian
psychology
• Leaving the church
due to papal
infallibility
• 1874-1894, Vienna
with short break for
marriage in Germany
Genetic and descriptive psychology
in Brentano
• Genetic psychology studies psychological
phenomena from a third-person point of view.
Empirical experiments.
• Descriptive psychology consciousness from a
first-person point of view, its goal is to list “fully
the basic components out of which everything
internally perceived by humans is composed,
and by enumerating the ways in which these
components can be connected” (Descriptive
Psychology , 4).
Intentionality as the defining feature
of psychology Brentano
Mental events do not stand alone: they are always
indicating something beyond themselves.
„There is no hearing without something heard,
belief without something believed, hope without
something hoped, and a striving without goal”.
This holds for emotions as well:
„One is happy because of sthing, … and we say I
am happy for this, this troubles me…”
 Semantic excursion
latin etimology: in tendere arcu  intendere

intention

stretching the mind towards an object

a determination to do a specific thing or act in a particular manner

 Three types of intentional relation
• Ideation (in sensation and imagining
• Judgement (existence-non existence, truth)
• Like-hate
• Ideation is the basis for cognition:
„The representational process is the basis not
only of judgement, but of desire and all other
mental acts. Nothing can be judged, or desired,
or feared without being represented”
Frege’s alternative (1848-1925)
Individual semantics is
not true
Association replaced by
proposition
Logical model of
thought
Thought  Image
Compositional
semantics
Sense and refernce
What happens after 30 years of
behaviorism?

Organism
with internal
Behaviorists parameters
60s Further
Empty
organism CogPsy abstraction
Linguistics 80s:
Cog Antro principles of
Ethology internal
AI machines with a parameters
mind
 Why is cognitive psychology crucial for
(American) psychology in second half
of 20th Century
• American dominance • 3rd person attitude has
in academic its own problems:
psychology from • Latent learning
1930s • Becomes rather
• It has a behavior clumsy
based metatheory • S ER = V x D x K x J x SHR - IR - SIR - SOR – SLR

• The essence of the psychological • FORGETS EUROPE

revolution was the serious, systematic
application of the stimulus response
formula to all aspects of behavior, with
a consequent development of rigor in
experimental analysis (Hebb, 1960)
• Tends to ignore inner life due to
method problems
This phase of the Revolution is surely
completed;let us press on with the
serious, persistent, and if necessary
daring, exploration of the thought
process
 Sperry, 1995 (40 YEARS LATER)
• psychology is today turning the tables on
physics and hard science and, with its
cognitive revolution, is now leading the
way in science to a more adequate and
more valid paradigm for scientific and all
causal explanation.
 The essence of the changes
1948: Norbert Wiener Cybernetics
Factors in the formation
1949 Shannon and Weaver information theory
of cognitive psychology
Field Impact incentive 1956: Birth of Cognitive Psychology dated back to George Miller’s “The Magical
Behaviorism Objectivity input–output analysis Number 7 Plus or Minus 2 and MIT meetings
Information Quantitative description
theory communication model 1957: Chomsky Syntactic structures. Language is a creative rule system
Cybernetics Regulation feedback learning
machines 1958 Broadbent Perception and communication
Mathematics Algebraic structures
1960: Miller founds the Center for Cognitive Studies at Harvard with famous
axiomatization
Computer Machine analogy flow charts cognitive developmentalist Jerome Bruner.
Linguistics Mentalism structures and rules
1967: Ulric Neisser Cognitive Psychology. First textbook
Ethology Innate species-specific modeling
releasers 1968: Process models of memory Atkinson & Shiffrin’s Multi-Store Model
Radio Information processing coding
technology Chomsky Language and mind Language is a mental organization innate in its
basic principles
Social Factors
1972: Newell and Simon develop the General Problem Solver model
Military needs Baby boom
1975: Piaget-Chomsky debate: determinants of development discussed
Changes of work Life style revolution
1982: D. Marr: Vision. Theoretical computational principles of vision
Sputnik shock Student boom 1983: Jerry Fodor The modularity of mind. A multifaceted vision of mind
Cold War Need for alternatives
 A computer inspired image of
cognition
• The model of
Broadbent 1958
Ontological neutrality
No commitment to specific Neuro
• One single active processing unit Cartesian
That comes later Vanda Derzsi
Beáta Tünde: developmental issues certainly central espacilly in Europe
• Symbol processing
vision of the mind
• Human cognition can be characterized as a
recoding process of several steps working
over symbols.
• It turns representations into different formats
the final format being a propositional
calculus.
• Human information is similar to a machine
that works in a sequential linear manner and
has limitations due to this linear
organization.
• Human processing limitations are of a single
common kind
• Relatively small capacity operative storage
systems and large capacity background
stores.
unity CPU
How to approach objectively the
mental?
Shepard Kosslyn
Garber: is experimentation the whole story? No

Some great novelties

Phenomenon First description Debates Citation Σ citation
Perception        
Recognition by templates Biederman 1987 Invariance N 5900 21.000
of geons
Attention filters Broadbent1958 Early and late 9500 24.000

Representation        
Iconic storage G. Sperling 1960 iconic memory 4300 12.000
Recoding of letters Posner 1978 additivity 3200 114.000
Mental rotation Shepard and Iconicity of 5500 37.000
Metzler1971 mental images
Mental images Kosslyn 1980   3400 45.000
Prototype categories Buddhism here Rosch 1975 Sharp and 8500 46.000
loose
Memory        
Magical number 7 G.Miller 1956 Limits chunks 26.000 110.000
STM models Atkinson & Shiffrin, How many 9000 44.000
1968 stores times
Working memory Baddeley &Hitch Active storage 14.000 118.000
1972
LTM structure Collins & Quilian,1968 Types of 4100 7000
arrows
Semantic memory Kintsch, 1974 Nodes with 3300 54.000
slots
Decisions        
Thinking decisions Tversky & Judgement 41.000 182.000
Kahnemann,1975 uncertainty
Decision errors Wason & Johnson- Selection 2100 13.000
Laird,1966 errors
Theory of mind ToM Premack –Woodruff, Theory of mind 6500 20.000
1978 in chimps
 Self interpretation as a
revolution
• Paradigm shift à la Kuhn
Psychology of consciousness  Behaviorism  Cognitivism
(Palermo, 1970)
• There are drastic changes in science, and we the new cognitive forces may
be the agents of one of these drastic changes. The so-called 'cognitive
revolution‘ in psychology brought about a rehabilitation of mentalism, in the
wake of the alleged inability of behaviorism to account for higher processes.
Socially this was true: generation change
Behaviorists in 1956 Would be cognitivists   Camp defections
Skinner 52 G. Miller 36 Deese, Palermo
Mowrer 49 R. Brown 31 R. Brown
Spence 49 Neisser 28 Le Ny
Osgood 40 Chomsky 28
 
 Questioning the ‘revolution’
rhetoric
• This shift was not logically compelled but rather was a
function of the persuasive writings of key cognitive
researchers and theorists (e.g. Chomsky). This shift in
emphasis is best characterized as a sociological phenomenon
- a change in allegiance that interestingly may be due in part
to the claim (which has immense rhetorical value) that a
scientific revolution has indeed taken place.
• Many psychologists may have simply abandoned the
behavioral tradition for cognitive psychology for reasons other
than those philosophers of science typically depict. Students
who enter the field hearing of the cognitive revolution are
more likely to seek training in the putatively ‘victorious’ model”
(O'Donohue, Ferguson and Naugle 2003 p. 85).
 Revolutionaries become
mainstream
• Disengage from the disturbing revolting
message of the paradigm notion.
• Fodor (1983) gives the new logo: I hate
relativism.
• “The idea that cognition saturates perception belongs
with [...] the idea in the philosophy of science that one’s
observations are comprehensively determined by one’s
culture; with the idea in sociology that one’s epistemic
commitments including especially one’s science are
comprehensively determined by one’s class affiliations.
[what all of this] relativism overlooks is the fixed structure
of human nature” (Fodor, 1985 p.5).
•  
Was behaviorism as behaviorist
as claimed ? G. Mandler (2002)
 Was the victory so fast ?
• PsychInf database
6000
5000
4000
3000
2000
1000
0
1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000/ 10

behaviorism cognitive psychology

 Rivalries and trends
Keywords by orientation
PsychInfo Spear, 2007 Stars

Roszkowski: we certainly still do measure behavior

Watrin and Darwich,2012: alternatives
rather than revolutions
The reification gave room to an origin myth that fosters
one tradition at the expense of others. The ‘revolution’ is
a story of progress but history does not flow toward
progress. Nothing in history assures that a development
will ever be a positive fact. The story also uses a wide
range of rhetorical devices. Like many revolutions the
cognitive is a story told by contrasts—in this case with
‘behaviorism.’ History however is not black and white a
simple collection of dichotomies. It is not a matter of
lights and darkness winners and losers
 Internal questioning of
computational models
• AI issues: Chinese Room. Missing
perceptual and social anchorage
• Sequentiality
• Fixed stores and parameters
• Parsimony
• LOT. The frame issue
 New move: CogSci First more
abstract then interpreted
• Mid 1990s CogSci • Reductions
takes the lead Trends in
cognition

Classical neutral
Interpreted
CogSci
CogSci
Functionalism

Biological Social
interpretation interpretation

Proximal:
neurobiology

Stances Dennett: Distal: evolution

intentional, design,
physical,
 The representation issue
reemerges
Cognition

Non-representational
Non-representational
Representationalist Subsymbolic
Implicit and skill based
connectionism
Pinker Ullman
PDP

Classical propositional Imagery

Fodor Phylyshyn Kosslyn Paivio knowing what
knowing how
Critical periods
Metacognition
Unified Newell-Simon Consciousness

Modular Fodor
Pylyshyn
Versions of CogSci

points of views
I
intersection
attitude
 Some typical trends within
psychology
5000

4000

3000
module
2000
modularity
1000

0
1980- 1990s 2000-10

Canalization Waddington, 1942

Evolution shapes the optimal path
Multiple canalizations
Relations of CogPsych - CogSci
• What is the real interdisciplinarity ?
60

50

40
Psychology
30 A.I.
Other
20

10
Teams Superrminds 0
1978 1988 1998 2008

• Neuroscience and CogSci fates

• Factual dualities: dominance of
experimental
• Everything becomes experimental
• What happens to psychology (Ákos) ?
 Summary
• Drastic change from the late 1970s
• Cognitive is not mentalistic
• Platonistic move with a change to more
interpretive a generation later
• EvoDevo models fitting to the social mind
• Multiplicities: Fast and Slow, Fixed and
Flexible
 Where do we move?
• Department changes
• Preservation of philosophy of mind
• Selectionism Darwin – Popper – Dennett –
Learning- Neuro
• Fate of ToM as an example
• There is a need for real interaction
 The different real life challenges to
classical CogSci according to Gentner
(2010)
 
The different real life challenges to
classical CogSci according to Gentner
(2010)
 
The different real life challenges to
classical CogSci according to Gentner (2010)
 Where does CEU stand?
• Strong commitment to social mind
• Developmental interpretation of the social
• ToM in all of its aspects
• Social and neuro complement each other
• Physical stance and the issue of modelling

• Misztótfalusi Kiss Classico