Cognitive Modeling and the Analysis of Computation Processes

0. Introduction Turing’s 1950 article “Computing machinery and intelligence” has contributed to shaping a tradition which assigns algorithms and computing machines a central role in the study of human cognition. Turing asked there whether machines can simulate human intelligent behavior, and illustrated how his earlier analysis of computation processes contributes to circumscribe the meaning of the term ‘machine’ entering the formulation of this broad question. In Turing’s spirit, one may ask today whether and how the classical analyses of computation of the 1930’s prompted by the incompleteness and undecidability theorems may help clarifying other notions, which have emerged over the last fifty years of epistemological discussions on cybernetics, artificial intelligence, and cognitive science. I will address a particular aspect of this question, namely, how the classical analyses of computation bear on our understanding of the notions of computational theory and model in cognitive science, and consequently on various epistemological issues involving these notions.