Two Projects for Understanding the Mind: A Response toMorris and Richardson

  • Authors:

  • Nick Chater;Martin Pickering

  • Affiliations:

  • University of Warwick, Department of Psychology, Coventry CV4 7AL, United Kingdom. E-mail nick.chater@warwick.ac.uk;University of Glasgow, Human Communication Research Centre, Department of Psychology, 56 Hillhead Street, Glasgow G12 9YR, United Kingdom. E-mail martin@psy.gla.ac.uk

  • Venue:
  • Minds and Machines
  • Year:
  • 1997

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Abstract

We respond to Morris and Richardson‘s (1995) claim thatPickering and Chater‘s (1995) arguments about the lack of arelation between cognitive science and folk psychology areflawed. We note that possible controversies about theappropriate uses for the two terms do not affect ourarguments. We then address their claim that computationalexplanation of knowledge-rich processes has proved possiblein the domains of problem solving, scientific discovery,and reasoning. We argue that, in all cases, computationalexplanation is only possible for aspects of those processesthat do not make reference to general knowledge. Weconclude that consideration of the issues raised byMorris and Richardson reinforces our original claim thatthere are two fundamentally distinct projects forunderstanding the mind, one based on justification, and theother on computational explanation, and that these applyto non-overlappingaspects of mental life.