The Nature And Meaning Of The Cognitive Turn Of The Western Philosophy Of Science

With the deepening of understanding of science, the theories and methods of the philosophy of science are also changing constantly. Logical empiricism focuses on scientific theories and uses empirical conformation and logical analysis in developing its theories. However, logical empiricism meets the criticism from histoncism for getting away from the influences which society and cultural factors have on science. Histoncism holds the idea that scientific theories themselves are inadequate to solve the problem of the scientific development, therefore, the problem should be traced back to social and cultural factors. Nevertheless, histoncism itself also has its weak points: it pays too much attention to the influence that the external social factors have on science, thus leading to relativism. The cognitive turn of the philosophy of science emphasizes the important role that scientists' cognitive factors play in the scientific activities, trying to overcome the predicament occurred in the past theories of the philosophy of science so that philosophy of science can further develop.The cognitive turn of the philosophy of science regards science as a cognitive phenomenon, trying to observe and study the scientific activities from the aspect of scientists' cognitive ability and emphasizing the influence which scientists' inner cognitive factors have on scientific theories. As the fourth turn of the philosophy of science, the cognitive turn absorbs the reasonable factors existing in "linguistic turn", "interpretiveturn", and "rhetorical turn" and understands science from a new angle. At the same time, the cognitive turn finds out the theoretical basis of the philosophy of science from the most newly development of cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy of mind and scientific sociology. Therefore, this turn helps provide a completely new explanatory frame for such problem of the philosophy of science as the nature of scientific theory, the growth of scientific knowledge, the transformation of scientific paradigm, the change of scientific belief and the discovery of scientific theories. On the whole, the cognitive turn of the philosophy of science will have a profound influence on the development of the philosophy of science in the 21th century.