Explanations in cognitive science

摘要

Cognitive science may be loosely described as the activity of trying to model aspects of human behaviour upon a computer. It has emerged as a blending of the techniques of artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology but these two disciplines have different, and incompatible, philosophies. Searle has detected elements of behaviourism and operationism within artificial intelligence, whereas cognitive psychology is essentially anti-behaviourist. It is argued that cognitive science needs to distinguish between ‘competence’ and ‘performance’ in order to clarify this point, and that such a distinction has far-reaching effects on how we view computer simulations of behaviour.