Elysia Chua Chiat Wei 13030107 Loren Pang 13030117 Chong Yung Yung 13030132 Awang Najib Awang

Mohamad 13030105 In the reading Implications of cognitive sciences for the philosophy of science, Ronald N. Giere writes about recent works in cognitive sciences and how it is employed within philosophy of science. As the gist of the reading, he stresses that the implications of cognitive sciences are dependent on ones conception of philosophy of science as well as the nature of work done in the field itself. One common misconception according to Giere, is that philosophy of science is said to be logically and epistemologically prior to any empirical enquiry, a notion that he dismisses, as this would have meant that cognitive science, as empirical sciences would not have any significance for philosophy of science. He elaborated on this point of view, stating that actual human cognition as explored in cognitive sciences does not fit into the logical empiricist framework where epistemological relationship between evidence and theory is a linguistic relationship. The ray of light, however seems to come from the viewpoint by Kuhn in his groundbreaking book- The structure of scientific revolutions which states that scientific knowledge is embodied in a scientific community, which shares a family of exemplars. Kuhn recognizes that cognitive scientists are able to study the nature and judgment of these exemplars. Additionally, Giere puts together the conditions in which philosophy of sciences could accommodate the relevance of research in cognitive sciences, namely: 1) Philosophy of science must be naturalistic. (Similar to empiricism way of deriving theories) 2) The understanding the nature of the scientific knowledge. 3) Judgmental capacity and activities of the scientist. In the other way round, Giere says that the conditions in which cognitive Science could accommodate the relevance of research in philosophy of sciences lies in the cluster of disciplines (neurosciences, cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence) one examines as the implications may conflict depending on discipline. In the discussion of implications from neuroscience, it involves the works of two main philosophers which are Paul Churchland and Thomas Kuhn. Churchlands viewpoints are more on the development of neuroscience in the field of philosophy of science, while the work of Kuhn in philosophy of science; Kuhnian exemplars, being referred by Churchland in developing theories and models. In Churchlands work of neuroscience he explained that the brain is a network consisting of layers of neuron-like units, the process of activation is from layer to another higher layer and the activation depends on the weight of layers of units which will influence the strength of the signal to go to the next higher layer unit. Churchland explain his exemplars as trained up network which primarily as pattern recognition, the neural network being program to be train with examples to get correct responses and also success with provide new examples related. There are two main characteristics of the network worked by Churchland, which are: network is not work in performing logical operation and the representation is distributed throughout the network. From here, the main focus of Churchland is the connectionist models which used to explain the scientists theory with related to the weight vector and

the scientists neural network. Which I agree with the writer where the writer stated that, Churchland too focuses on the models and no attention on the cognitive theory. He focuses on the interior part of brain and neglects the external part of the brain which also plays important roles, as stated that Kuhn claims that the distribution is in the brain of the scientist and also among their external representation devices. Signal and these representations are not only happen in the brain but also affect by many other external representation devices. The next part that writer discuss is between cognitive psychology and philosophy of sciences. This discussion involves Nancy Nersessian as cognitive scientist and several other philosophers like Thomas Kuhn. There are two statements in argument, which are: statement argues by philosophers is that the conceptual development in science is cumulative, while cognitive scientist argues that the conceptual development in science is continuous. Here, writer highlights several main points that argue by Nersessian. One of the main points is that the construction of adequate theory cannot be depends on one abstract structures with no internal dynamical forces to make change happen. Besides Nersessian also claims that the theory of conceptual change in a must in cognitive sciences activities. Another main point is that, the basic units of analysis should be the individual scientist not concepts or theories, then the focus would be how scientist develops new conceptual structures. The mean of putting scientist as the center of focus can be understood by the statement: Putting the scientist at the center of a cognitive theory of science thus makes it possible causally to connect a variety of interests and interactions with the actual historical course of science. The writer also point out the needs of motivation and interest in conceptual development, an individual unable to explain the development of theories or models without any interest in it, and the motivation aspect is a must in cognitive. I agree with the writer where cognitive science may provide interesting solution for the problems of philosophy of science. But the issues is that, there is always differences and changes in the research of cognitive sciences, where the differences by according to different concept of the scientists. And it is very interesting when the writer uses the metaphor of picture to explain the complexity of the representation statement. From different angle of the picture we can see different scene of the picture, as can be uses in the situation of explaining statement, concept or theories; explain a representative from different perspective and concept able to give different view and understanding. And this is totally opposite with the cumulative idea of conceptual development in philosophy of sciences. From the aspect of Artificial Intelligence (AI), AI has indirect implications on philosophy of sciences as it is more towards applications of the theories instead of helping in developing explanations. AI can be the development that can perform a variety of scientific tasks. Examples such as the discovery program, programs that generate and evaluate causal models in the social sciences and programs which aid in classification and resolution of anomalies arising in the course of theorizing and experimentation. Paul Thagard tried to apply standard AI techniques to philosophy of science by regarding the use of explanatory coherence instead of Logical Empiricism. But the writer analyze that it is only the differences of implementation instead of fundamental principles. Thagards idea of the application of AI in human thinking is merely impossible as human do not use explanatory coherence in deciding among rival theories. Thagard cannot explain the way people perceive is due to the greater explanatory coherence to Copernican theory or their mind just naturally worked according to his principles. Motivations and interests will also affect the choices of one theory over a rival theory. AI is a tool in computational theory which is under the cognitive philosophy of science.

In conclusion, the theories and methods from cognitive sciences can be used in the philosophy of science as it aligns with Logical Empiricism. The writers view is that there is a need to rethink from the ground up for philosophy of science due to the incorporate of cognitive science. I agree with the writer as cognitive science provides a new and diverse view which will affect the philosophy of science directly or indirectly. Overall, the examples given in this article are too specific which is difficult for the novice in this field to understand. Moreover the article is too lengthy and used specific terms without explaining it to the readers.