The protocol algorithm abstracted from a human cognizer's own narrative in the course of doing a cognitive task is an explanation of the corresponding mental activity in Pylyshyn's (1984) virtual machine model of mind. Strong equivalence between an analytic algorithm and the protocol algorithm is an index of validity of the explanatory model. Cognitive psychologists may not find the index stron...

When interpreting the actions of people from other societies from a moral point of view, we often err. Two types of errors are of particular relevance here. One consists in overestimating the similarity across cultures of the moral judgments that guide people’s actions and interactions. The other consists in underestimating this similarity. Arguably, the first kind of error is common among psyc...

The purpose of this paper is to review the way in which cultural contributions to human nature have been treated within the fi eld of cognitive science. I was initially motivated to write about this topic when invited to give a talk to a Cognitive Science department at a sister university in California a few years ago. My goal, on that occasion, was to convince my audience, none of whom were pr...

Reading segments is not reading words: Comment on Kawamoto et al. (2014) Simone Sulpizio & Cristina Burani a Department of Psychology and Cognitive Science (DiPSCo), University of Trento, Trento, Italy b Fondazione Marica De Vincenzi ONLUS, Rovereto, Italy c Institute for Cognitive Sciences and Technologies (ISTC-CNR), Rome, Italy d Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Trieste, I...

Recent accounts of mechanistic explanation suggest that models are only explanatory insofar as they map neatly onto lower level components (Craver, 2006; Piccinini and Craver, 2011; Kaplan and Craver, 2011). In the case of extensions into the cognitive sciences, this has meant interpreting the ‘integration’ of cognitive psychology and neuroscience to mean treating cognitive models as scaffoldin...

Our aim is to show that the logical point of view and methods of logic are indispensable for the understanding of human cognition. However, the results of some well known psychological experiments may be seen as denying the relevance of logic in studying human reasoning. Wrong design decisions and interpretations of these experiments are analyzed in this chapter. Arguments supporting an externa...

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) has a serious claim to be the single most influential figure in the pre20th century history of cognitive research. His influence continues to be so deep-running that in many respects he is the intellectual grandfather of contemporary cognitive science. Consider the widely-held view that sensory input has to be worked up using concepts or concept-like states, or the con...

I The neo-classical approach to analyzing the performance of an economy assumes that in the face of pervasive scarcity individuals make choices reflecting a set of desires, wants or preferences. The theory is derived from the aggregation of those preferences in the context of fixed resources, private goods, and given technology. (Schofield, 1995, p 192) The result has been a powerful set of too...

Experiences of art involve exercise of ordinary cognitive and perceptual capacities but in unique ways. These two features of experiences of art imply the mutual importance of aesthetics and cognitive science. Cognitive science provides empirical and theoretical analysis of the relevant cognitive capacities. Aesthetics thus does well to incorporate cognitive scientific research. And aesthetics ...