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

each of the three schools of thought appeals to the notion of representation, while
at the same time debating its nature. Are representations symbols, distributed patterns,
or external artifacts? All cognitive scientists have rejected Cartesian dualism
and are seeking materialist explanations of cognition.
More generally, all three approaches in cognitive science agree that cognition
involves interactions between the world and states of agents. This is why a pioneer
of classical cognitive science can make the following embodied claim: “A man,
viewed as a behaving system, is quite simple. The apparent complexity of his behavior
over time is largely a reflection of the complexity of the environment in which he
finds himself” (Simon, 1969, p. 25). However, it is again fair to say that the contributions
of world, body, and mind receive different degrees of emphasis within the
three approaches to cognitive science. We saw earlier that production system pioneers
admitted that they emphasized internal planning and neglected perception
and action (Anderson et al., 2004; Newell, 1990). Only recently have they turned
to including sensing and acting in their models (Kieras & Meyer, 1997; Meyer et al.,
2001; Meyer & Kieras, 1997a, 1997b, 1999; Meyer et al., 1995). Even so, they are still
very reluctant to include sense-act processing—links between sensing and acting
that are not mediated by internal representations—to their sense-think-act production
systems (Dawson, Dupuis, & Wilson, 2010).
A fourth line of evidence is the existence of hybrid theories, such as natural
computation (Marr, 1982) or Pylyshyn’s (2003) account of visual cognition. These
theories explicitly draw upon concepts from each approach to cognitive science.
Hybrid theories are only possible when there is at least tacit recognition that each
school of thought within cognitive science has important, co-operative contributions
to make. Furthermore, the existence of such theories completely depends
upon the need for such co-operation: no one school of thought provides a sufficient
explanation of cognition, but each is a necessary component of such an
explanation.
It is one thing to note the possibility of a synthesis in cognitive science. It is
quite another to point the way to bringing such a synthesis into being. One required
component, discussed earlier in this chapter, is being open to the possible contributions
of the different schools of thought, an openness demonstrated by the pragmatic
and interdisciplinary natural computation theory of perception.
A second component, which is the topic of this final section of the book, is
being open to a methodological perspective that pervaded early cognitive science
and its immediate ancestors, but which has become less favored in more recent
times. Synthesis in cognitive science may require a return, at least in part, to the
practice of synthetic psychology.
Present-day cognitive science for the most part employs analytic, and not
synthetic, methodological practices. That is, most cognitive scientists are in the
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