The mind of science: A critique of computationalism's scientific approach to mind

In the field of cognitive science two major philosophical theses about the nature of mind have been jointly embraced: a computational theory of mind and a representational theory of mind. The first is the view that the mind is an information processing system which manipulates symbolic codes; the second is the idea that those codes are neurally encoded, semantically evaluable representations of reality that mediate cognitively between a knowing subject and a world of known objects. This thesis is a critique of a particular version of the computational theory of mind and its correlative theory of mental representation as cognitive mediators, advocated most notably by Jerry Fodor. Using Wilfrid Sellars's framework of the manifest image and the scientific image of "man" in the world, salient features of the traditional representationalism of Descartes, Locke and Kant are analyzed in order to bring out the irresolvable difficulties that have been inherited in cognitive science due to contemporary computationalism's adherence to a representationalist view of the nature of mind. I argue that the difficulties inherent in computationalism's scientific-image theory of mind and mental representation are compounded by an outmoded conception of science (and of causality in particular), which leads to a rejection of subjectivity as a foundation for a theory of mind. Cognitive science, I claim, cannot ignore the priority of the manifest image as a continuing context for scientific theorizing in the way that computationalist theory would demand. As a positive alternative to the "cognitive mediator" idea of mental representation, I advance the begnnings of a theory which regards mind as involving a direct, dynamic, cognitive interaction between persons as subjects and the familiar world of objects. This kind of "manifest image" interaction is an interpretive one which is conditioned by a socio-cultural set of concepts and practices, including those of scientific theorizing. It is within this context that a theory of mind relevant to educational research must be set.