Table Of Contenti
Current Controversies in Philosophy
of Cognitive Science
Cognitive science is the study of minds and mental processes. Psychology, neuro-
science, computer science, and philosophy, among other subdisciplines, contribute
to this study. In this volume, leading researchers debate five core questions in the
philosophy of cognitive science:
• Is an innate Universal Grammar required to explain our linguistic capacities?
• Are concepts innate or learned?
• What role do our bodies play in cognition?
• Can neuroscience help us understand the mind?
• Can cognitive science help us understand human morality?
For each topic, the volume provides two essays, each advocating for an opposing
approach. The editors provide study questions and suggested readings for each
topic, helping to make the volume accessible to readers who are new to the debates.
Adam J. Lerner is Assistant Professor/ Faculty Fellow at the New York University
Center for Bioethics. He completed his PhD in Philosophy at Princeton University
in 2018 and he works on issues in ethics, metaethics, moral psychology, and the
philosophy of mind.
Simon Cullen is Assistant Teaching Professor of Philosophy at Carnegie Mellon
University. He earned his PhD in Philosophy at Princeton University in 2015 and
was a postdoctoral research fellow at Princeton Neuroscience Institute in 2017.
His work focuses on the folk concept of self, especially the notion of a “true self”
and its theoretical and normative implications; developing empirical methods to
advance experimental philosophy and other areas of social scientific inquiry; and
helping people improve at open- minded analytical reasoning and communication.
Sarah- Jane Leslie is the Class of 1943 Professor of Philosophy and Dean of the
Graduate School at Princeton University. She is the author of numerous articles
in philosophy and psychology, published in journals such as Science, Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences, Philosophical Review, and Noûs.
ii
Current Controversies in Philosophy
Series Editor: John Turri, University of Waterloo
In venerable Socratic fashion, philosophy proceeds best through reasoned con-
versation. Current Controversies in Philosophy provides short, accessible volumes
that cast a spotlight on ongoing central philosophical conversations. In each book,
pairs of experts debate four or five key issues of contemporary concern, setting
the stage for students, teachers and researchers to join the discussion. Short chapter
descriptions precede each chapter, and an annotated bibliography and suggestions
for further reading conclude each controversy. In addition, each volume includes
both a general introduction and a supplemental guide to further controversies.
Combining timely debates with useful pedagogical aids allows the volumes to
serve as clear and detailed snapshots, for all levels of readers, of some the most
exciting work happening in philosophy today.
Published Volumes in the Series:
Current Controversies in Bioethics
Edited by S. Matthew Liao and Collin O’Neil
Current Controversies in Philosophy of Film
Edited by Katherine Thomson-Jones
Current Controversies in Metaphysics
Edited by Elizabeth Barnes
Current Controversies in Values and Science
Edited by Kevin C. Elliott and Daniel Steel
Current Controversies in Philosophy of Religion
Edited by Paul Draper
Current Controversies in Philosophy of Cognitive Science
Edited by Adam J. Lerner, Simon Cullen, and Sarah-Jane Leslie
For more information about this series, please visit:
www.routledge.com/Current-Controversies-in-Philosophy/book-series/CCIP
iii
Current Controversies
in Philosophy of
Cognitive Science
Edited by
Adam J. Lerner, Simon Cullen,
and Sarah- Jane Leslie
iv
First published 2020
by Routledge
52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017
and by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business
© 2020 Taylor & Francis
The right of Adam J. Lerner, Simon Cullen and Sarah- Jane Leslie to be identified
as authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised
in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or
hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information
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Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks,
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
A catalog record has been requested for this book
ISBN: 978- 1- 138- 85800- 8 (hbk)
ISBN: 978- 1- 003- 02627- 3 (ebk)
Typeset in Bembo
by Newgen Publishing UK
v
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Introduction 1
PART I
Is There a Universal Grammar? 11
1 Universal Grammar 13
PAUL PIETROSKI AND NORBERT HORNSTEIN
2 Waiting for Universal Grammar 29
GEOFFREY K. PULLUM
Further Readings for Part I 44
Study Questions for Part I 46
PART II
Are All Concepts Learned? 47
3 Beyond Origins: Developmental Pathways and the Dynamics of
Brain Networks 49
LINDA B. SMITH, LISA BYRGE, AND OLAF SPORNS
4 The Metaphysics of Developing Cognitive Systems: Why the
Brain Cannot Replace the Mind 63
MARK FEDYK AND FEI XU
Further Readings for Part II 83
Study Questions for Part II 84
vi
vi Contents
PART III
What Is the Role of the Body in Cognition? 85
5 Embodied Cognition and the Neural Reuse Hypothesis 87
JULIAN KIVERSTEIN
6 Rehashing Embodied Cognition and the Neural Reuse
Hypothesis 108
FRED ADAMS
Further Readings for Part III 117
Study Questions for Part III 118
PART IV
How Should Neuroscience Inform the Study of Cognition? 119
7 Is Cognitive Neuroscience an Oxymoron? 121
FIERY CUSHMAN
8 On the Primacy of Behavioral Research for Understanding
the Brain 134
YAEL NIV
Further Readings for Part IV 150
Study Questions for Part IV 152
PART V
What Can Cognitive Science Teach Us About Ethics? 153
9 The Ethical Significance of Cognitive Science 155
VICTOR KUMAR
10 Putting the “Social” Back in Social Psychology 174
COLIN KLEIN
Further Readings for Part V 188
Study Questions for Part V 190
Index 191
vii
Contributors
Fred Adams is Professor of Linguistics and Cognitive Science at the University
of Delaware. He is also Professor of Philosophy there. He has published over
150 articles on philosophy and cognitive science, in addition to his jointly
published book Bounds of Cognition (2007) and Introduction to the Philosophy
of Psychology (2018).
Lisa Byrge is Postdoctoral Researcher at Indiana University. Her research focuses
on detecting and understanding individual differences in brain function
using fMRI.
Fiery Cushman is John L. Loeb Associate Professor of Social Sciences in the
Department of Psychology at Harvard University. His research focuses on
value- guided decision making and, especially, moral judgment and decision
making.
Mark Fedyk is Associate Professor in the Bioethics Program of the UC Davis
School of Medicine and the Betty Irene Moore School of Nursing. He is the
author of The Social Turn in Moral Psychology (2017) as well as a variety of articles
and chapters that examine how normative phenomena can be studied using
scientific methods.
Norbert Hornstein teaches linguistics at the University of Maryland. He has
written several books on syntactic theory including A Theory of Syntax (2009)
and Move! (2001).
Julian Kiverstein is Senior Researcher at the University of Amsterdam Medical
Centre based in the Psychiatry Department. He has published extensively in
the philosophy of embodied cognition, including the monograph Extended
Consciousness and Predictive Processing: A Third- Wave View, co- authored with
Michael Kirchhoff (2019).
Colin Klein is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National
University. His work focuses on philosophy of neuroscience, pain perception
(What the Body Commands, 2015), and online trust. He is also a CI on the ANU
Humanizing Machine Intelligence project, where he explores the philosoph-
ical and ethical implications of machine learning algorithms.
vnewiiigenprepdf
viii Contributors
Victor Kumar is Assistant Professor at Boston University. He works mainly at the
intersection of ethics and cognitive science. His published work can be found
in Ethics, Noûs, and Philosophers’ Imprint. In recent years he has written about
moral learning, moral luck, and moral disgust. He is currently finishing a book
with Richmond Campbell about moral evolution and moral progress.
Yael Niv is Professor in the Psychology Department at Princeton University,
and at the Princeton Neuroscience Institute. Her lab’s research focuses on the
neural and computational processes underlying reinforcement learning and
decision making. She is co- founder and co- director of the Rutgers– Princeton
Center for Computational Cognitive Neuropsychiatry.
Paul Pietroski is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University.
His research addresses questions concerning linguistic meaning and its relation
to cognition. His most recent book is Conjoining Meanings: Semantics without
Truth Values (2018). He has held visiting positions at Harvard University and
the École Normale, Paris.
Geoffrey K. Pullum is Professor of General Linguistics in the School of
Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh.
He is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Linguistic Society of America.
He has published widely in theoretical linguistics, English grammar, and phil-
osophy of linguistics.
Linda B. Smith is Distinguished Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences
and Chancellor’s Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences at Indiana
University, Bloomington.
Olaf Sporns is Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychological
and Brain Sciences at Indiana University in Bloomington. His main research
area is theoretical and computational neuroscience, with a focus on complex
brain networks. In addition to numerous peer- reviewed journal articles, he has
authored two books, Networks of the Brain and Discovering the Human Connectome.
Fei Xu is Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her
research focuses on cognitive and language development from infancy to
middle childhood. She has published more than 100 journal articles and book
chapters. In recent years, she and her collaborators have developed a rational
constructivist theory of cognitive development, with a strong emphasis on char-
acterizing mechanisms of learning such as language/s ymbol learning, Bayesian
inductive learning, and constructive thinking.
1
Introduction
Cognitive science is the study of minds and mental processes. Psychology, neuro-
science, computer science, and philosophy, among other subdisciplines, all con-
tribute to this study. Consequently, work done under the heading “philosophy of
cognitive science” varies significantly. Some of this work could be more accurately
described as philosophy in cognitive science, wherein philosophical methods are
used to advance first- order debates in cognitive science that have a distinctly philo-
sophical flavor (e.g., concerning cognitive architecture, the innateness of concepts,
the ability to think about other minds). Some of what gets called “philosophy of
cognitive science” could be more accurately described as philosophy with cogni-
tive science or even cognitive science of philosophy, in which researchers draw
on results from cognitive science to advance a wide variety of questions in phil-
osophy concerning not just the metaphysics of mind, but also epistemology, ethics,
philosophy of language, and philosophical methodology in general. The rest of
what gets called “philosophy of cognitive science” is most accurately described as
philosophy of cognitive science, which addresses the methodological and general
ontological presuppositions of cognitive science (e.g., concerning the nature of
representation, the relationship between modeling and ontology, what explanation
requires, the possibility of reduction, standards of theory choice).
But these distinct strands of work in philosophy of cognitive science are not
entirely independent. Indeed, most chapters in this volume address both first-
order questions about cognition and second-o rder (methodological) questions
about how best to study cognition. The authors argue that what we say about the
first- order questions should inform our methodological views, and vice versa. As
will become evident, a dominant thread running throughout the volume involves
the rippling implications of new empirical methods for addressing questions that
have been traditionally considered a priori or best pursued using older empirical
methods.
Part I
The volume begins with two cutting- edge contributions to perhaps the 20th
century’s most contentious debate in philosophy of cognitive science: the debate
over Universal Grammar. In their contribution, Paul Pietroski and Norbert
