Introduction

pp. 1-4

in: Jeff Coulter, Rethinking cognitive theory, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 1983

Abstract

A variety of interrelated theoretical problems arising out of the study of cognition are examined in this book. At the heart of many of these problems are recurrent programmatic claims about the appropriateness of conceiving of human "cognitive conduct" in terms of conceptual schemes borrowed from computer science. The "computational" theory of mind and behaviour, and the related notions of persons as "information-processing systems' and 'sentient automata", informs a great deal of contemporary research and theory construction in the field. As many commentators have noted,¹ the leading alternative to behaviouristic strategies of description and explanation these days is some form of "cognitive" model of conduct, and this is increasingly the case not only within human psychology, but within theoretical linguistics, philosophy of mind and action, microsociology and anthropology. Indeed, since the celebrated Chomsky-Skinner debate of the late nineteen fifties, one can trace a polarisation among theoreticians in the human sciences, if not a full-blown case of a "paradigm-shift".