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

3
Elements of Classical Cognitive Science
3.0 Chapter Overview
When cognitive science arose in the late 1950s, it did so in the form of what is now
known as the classical approach. Inspired by the nature of the digital electronic
computer, classical cognitive science adopted the core assumption that cognition
was computation. The purpose of the current chapter is to explore the key ideas of
classical cognitive science that provide the core elements of this assumption.
The chapter begins by showing that the philosophical roots of classical cognitive
science are found in the rationalist perspective of Descartes. While classical
cognitive scientists agree with the Cartesian view of the infinite variety of language,
they do not use this property to endorse dualism. Instead, taking advantage
of modern formal accounts of information processing, they adopt models that use
recursive rules to manipulate the components of symbolic expressions. As a result,
finite devices—physical symbol systems—permit an infinite behavioural potential.
Some of the key properties of physical symbol systems are reviewed.
One consequence of viewing the brain as a physical substrate that brings a
universal machine into being is that this means that cognition can be simulated
by other universal machines, such as digital computers. As a result, the computer
simulation of human cognition becomes a critical methodology of the classical
approach. One issue that arises is validating such simulations. The notions of weak
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