Mind, Body, World- Foundations of Cognitive Science, 2013a

links between the two at the different levels of analysis, as we have been discussing
in the preceding pages of the current chapter.
3.16 What is Classical Cognitive Science?
The purpose of the current chapter was to introduce the foundations of classical
cognitive science—the “flavour” of cognitive science that first emerged in the late
1950s—and the school of thought that still dominates modern cognitive science.
The central claim of classical cognitive science is that “cognition is computation.”
This short slogan has been unpacked in this chapter to reveal a number of philosophical
assumptions, which guide a variety of methodological practices.
The claim that cognition is computation, put in its modern form, is identical to
the claim that cognition is information processing. Furthermore, classical cognitive
science views such information processing in a particular way: it is processing that
is identical to that carried out by a physical symbol system, a device like a modern
digital computer. As a result, classical cognitive science adopts the representational
theory of mind. It assumes that the mind contains internal representations (i.e.,
symbolic expressions) that are in turn manipulated by rules or processes that are
part of a mental logic or a (programming) language of thought. Further to this, a
control mechanism must be proposed to explain how the cognitive system chooses
what operation to carry out at any given time.
The classical view of cognition can be described as the merging of two distinct
traditions. First, many of its core ideas—appeals to rationalism, computation,
innateness—are rooted in Cartesian philosophy. Second, it rejects Cartesian dualism
by attempting to provide materialist explanations of representational processing.
The merging of rationality and materialism is exemplified by the physical symbol
system hypothesis. A consequence of this is that the theories of classical cognitive
science are frequently presented in the form of working computer simulations.
In Chapter 2, we saw that the basic properties of information processing systems
required that they be explained at multiple levels. Not surprisingly, classical
cognitive scientists conduct their business at multiple levels of analysis, using formal
methods to answer computational questions, using simulation and behavioural
methods to answer algorithmic questions, and using a variety of behavioural and
biological methods to answer questions about architecture and implementation.
The multidisciplinary nature of classical cognitive science is revealed in its most
typical methodology, a version of reverse engineering called functional analysis. We
have seen that the different stages of this type of analysis are strongly related to the
multiple levels of investigations that were discussed in Chapter 2. The same relationship
to these levels is revealed in the comparative nature of classical cognitive
122 Chapter 3