How can philosophy be a true cognitive science discipline?
Topics in Cognitive Science July 1, 2010 William Bechtel
Philosophy has historically played a minor role in cognitive science, but three naturalistic philosophical projects from the past 30 years offer theoretical and methodological contributions. First, stances on the mind-body problem—identity theory, functionalism, and heuristic identity theory—inform how cognitive science relates to neuroscience and cognitive neuroscience. Second, analyses of mental representations, especially new approaches to how representations have content, help clarify the relation between cognitive agents and their environments. Third, accounts of mechanistic explanation in philosophy of science provide perspective on cognitive science's explanatory project and may offer normative guidance for integrating multiple disciplinary perspectives when understanding a given mechanism.