Slide 4 of 37
Notes:
A major part of the guidance for current cognitive science conceptualizations of thinking derives from ideas expressed by Descartes (e.g., 1662). Descartes promoted the scientific study of human behavior by distinguishing between the body and the soul as the sources of involuntary behavior and voluntary behavior respectively. There is currently little sympathy for Descartes' metaphysical dualism among cognitive scientists, nevertheless, many of the functional aspects of his separation remain so firmly entrenched even in our language, that they govern our thinking on the issues.
For example, in place of the distinction between body and soul, we might consider the distinction between cognitively penetrable processes and those that are due to the mere architecture of the system (e.g., Pylyshyn, 1984). As Dennett (e.g., 1991) has pointed out repeatedly, many theories employ some version of the "Cartesian theater" in which consciousness is thought to functionally reside as the focus of the senses and the terminus of perceptual processing. Several investigators are concerned with the incorrigibility of cognitive experience and with trying to explain qualia in monistic terms. Finally, a related problem is to decide whether a machine could be intelligent, have a mind, or think.
