TY - JOUR
T1 - How Cognition came into being
AU - Bever, Thomas G.
N1 - Funding Information:
Primary thanks go to Anne Cutler, who patiently encouraged me and edited out some of the more egregious infelicities and made many constructive and valuable suggestions, which are herein incorporated. I also received helpful comments from Dick Aslin, Gerry Altmann, Noam Chomsky, Susana Franck, John Morton, Steve Pinker, and Mihai Surdeanu, as well as supportive readings by Noam Chomsky, Jay Keyser, Lila Gleitman, and Massimo Piattelli Palmarini.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021
PY - 2021/8
Y1 - 2021/8
N2 - Jacques Mehler and I started Cognition, to break the grip of empiricist associationist behaviorism and stultifying style requirements on scientific discourse, and to liberate Cognitive Psychology's contributions to social issues. The journal provided opportunities for upcoming generations to expand Cognitive Psychology, publishing new concepts unhindered by established topics and standard formats. As the journal matured, Jacques kept. it fresh for 4 decades, seeking young scientists, novel ideas, and elegant writing, as it midwifed the emergence from Reductionist Behaviorism through Cognitive Psychology to rationalist Cognitive Science. The journal now has opportunities to nurture further progress in the future of Cognitive Science. I speculate that the field will keep associationist processes but integrate them with a new kind of non-reductionist theory that eschews detailed predictions, and which which interprets the brain as an enactor of thought, but not its structural cause. Ideally it will provide a set of constraints on the action of brain and mind that subsume and explain behavioral regularities, the role of frequency, how the brain externalizes those constraints and how the externalization processes emerge developmentally as a function of innate factors, structures unique to the mind and brain, experience and natural law.
AB - Jacques Mehler and I started Cognition, to break the grip of empiricist associationist behaviorism and stultifying style requirements on scientific discourse, and to liberate Cognitive Psychology's contributions to social issues. The journal provided opportunities for upcoming generations to expand Cognitive Psychology, publishing new concepts unhindered by established topics and standard formats. As the journal matured, Jacques kept. it fresh for 4 decades, seeking young scientists, novel ideas, and elegant writing, as it midwifed the emergence from Reductionist Behaviorism through Cognitive Psychology to rationalist Cognitive Science. The journal now has opportunities to nurture further progress in the future of Cognitive Science. I speculate that the field will keep associationist processes but integrate them with a new kind of non-reductionist theory that eschews detailed predictions, and which which interprets the brain as an enactor of thought, but not its structural cause. Ideally it will provide a set of constraints on the action of brain and mind that subsume and explain behavioral regularities, the role of frequency, how the brain externalizes those constraints and how the externalization processes emerge developmentally as a function of innate factors, structures unique to the mind and brain, experience and natural law.
KW - Cognition
KW - Cognitive psychology
KW - Jacques Mehler
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85108537632&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85108537632&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104761
DO - 10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104761
M3 - Article
C2 - 33443650
AN - SCOPUS:85108537632
SN - 0010-0277
VL - 213
JO - Cognition
JF - Cognition
M1 - 104761
ER -