Positivism and the prospects for cognitive science

William E. Smythe

pp. 103-118

in: Charles W. Tolman (ed), Positivism in psychology, Berlin, Springer, 1992

Abstract

It may seem perverse to speak of positivistic tendencies in modern cognitive science. The rise of the cognitive tradition, after all, marked the end of the most blatantly positivistic period in psychology's history; and, however one might judge the merits and limitations of cognitivism, a common view is that it has at least saved us from the positivistic excesses of the behaviorists. Yet this is only partly true. As Stephen Toulmin (1969) has pointed out in a related connection, "even though we slay our intellectual parents, we cannot help but inherit from them" (pp. 50–51); and so have the cognitivists, without fully realizing it, inherited certain attitudes and tendencies from the positivists. This is not to overlook some rather obvious differences between the two traditions. As an empirical enterprise, contemporary cognitive science is not a positivistic science by any stretch of the imagination. Its basic terms of reference are seldom clearly tied to observations; and some current styles of cognitive research, for example, certain approaches to computer modelling, are even explicitly nonempirical in character.

Cited authors

Toulmin Stephen