Outline of a new approach to the nature of mind



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1 Whether cognitive science is a perspective rather than a science (Hunt 1989) or whether it constitutes
a renaming of the field of psychology (Newell 1990) raise potentially important issues beyond the
scope of this article. In what follows I use the two terms interchangeably.

2 Within the cognitive architectures approach examples include: Anderson 1983; Anderson & Lebiere
(1998); Anderson et. al. 2004; Grossberg & Kuperstein (1989); Smolenski & Legendre (2006); Sun
(2002). Alternative approaches include: vector spaces (e.g., Bunge 1980); modularity (e.g., Chomsky
1980a, 1980b; Fodor 1983); extended mind hypothesis (e.g., Clark & Chalmers 1998; Logan 2007);
the dynamical hypothesis (e.g., Van Gelder 1998); mind as a decision-making organ (e.g., Gintis
2007); the Pleistocene mind hypothesis (e.g., Tooby & Cosmides 1992); the theory of neuronal group
selection (e.g., Edelman 1987); brain-inspired non-linear dynamics (e.g., Freeman 1999).

3 As a result of this a lot of AI systems have been proposed as cognitive architectures (for a recent
survey see Vernon et. al 2007).

4 For an earlier, different, list of criteria and comparison of Act-R (e.g., Anderson 1990, 1993), AuRA
(e.g., Arkin 1990), Soar (e.g., Newell 1990,1992) and TNGS (e.g. Edelman 1987), see Gelepithis
(1999).

5 Anderson and Lebiere’s argument for computational universality is essentially based on earlier views
of Newell (1980). But Newell made references to his earlier work including Newell (1980) whenever
he thought it appropriate and he most definitely did not do that in the case of the first criterion. For
more on the overlap among the various proposed criteria see Gelepithis (2003).

6 Interestingly and importantly, the posited hypothesis is consistent with the indterdependent construal
of self characterising non-western cultures as well as parts of western psychology and social sciences
(e.g., Markus & Kitayama 1991). A good example of the latter is the increasing interest in social
cognition and, in particular, collective memory (see editorial (Barnier & Sutton 2008) and associated
theoretical and empirical papers in a special issue of
Memory).

7 It should be noted that acceptance of the MBI is a minority viewpoint. The majority view, outside the
computational paradigm, is that mental processes are
caused/produced by the firing of neurons (Searle
2007 for a brief argument). See Borst (1970) for a still excellent provision of the main variants of MBI
(or identity theory as it is alternatively known). For some important recent work see Chalmers’s (2002)
collection of readings.



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