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

iological agents. To do so, its models—including those developed via forward engineering—must
be validated. Validating a theory requires the traditional practices
of the analytic approach, seeking equivalences between computations, algorithms,
and architectures. It is hard to imagine such validation not proceeding by adopting
analytic methods that provide relative complexity, error, and intermediate state evidence.
It is also hard to imagine that a complete exploration of a putative cognitive
architecture will not exploit analytic evidence from the neurosciences.
Indeed, it may be that the inability to use analytic evidence to validate a “pure”
model from one school of thought may be the primary motivation to consider alternative
perspectives, fueling a true synthesis within cognitive science. According to
Kuhn (1970), paradigms are born by discovering anomalies. The analytic techniques
of cognitive science are well equipped to discover such problems. What is then
required for synthesis is a willingness amongst cognitive scientists to admit that
competing views of cognition might be able to be co-operatively applied in order to
resolve anomalies.
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