NetNews Usenet Archive 1993 #3/NN_1993_3.iso/spool/sci/cognitiv/1042

Text File | 1993-01-27 | 2.5 KB | 52 lines

Newsgroups: sci.cognitive
Path: sparky!uunet!uunet.ca!geac!utcsri!psych.toronto.edu!christo
From: [e-mail] (Christopher Green)
Subject: Re: Cog Psych theories
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Organization: Department of Psychology, University of Toronto
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Date: Wed, 27 Jan 1993 20:57:44 GMT
Lines: 41

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] (SWANN philip) writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Christopher Green) writes:
>
>Surely formalization is neither necessary nor sufficient for a theory
>to be powerful or productive.

At the very least, it's highly desirable.

>There's a theory at the moment that the
>Dinosaurs were warm-blooded: I don't see how this theory could be
>formalized, nor do I see how it relies on our "intuitions" - but I'm sure
>that it's an interesting theory that contributes to scientific progress.

It's also embedded in evolutionary theory, which is highly articulated,
if not actually formalized. To the degree that evolutionary theory has
been informal, it has sufferred from many of the criticisms I mentioned
before. Until it was linked up with genetic theory -- therby offering
*means* of hereditary transmission -- it was hardly taken seriously.
As for reliance on intuitions, you've stumbled right into the problem.
It is often *very* difficult to see how theories rely crucially on
our pre-theoretic intuitions until they've been around for a very long
time. The problem has been particularly damaging in psychology, where
unexplicated terminology has often turned out, upon analysis, to make
theories utterly circular. Fortunately, with J-L et al., it's not
so hard to see, since they give *no definitions whatsoever* of
crucial terms such as model, schema, and the like. There's an excellent
critique of this in an unpublished paper by Jaakko Hintikka called
"Mental models, semantical games, and varieties of intelligence".
(I know it's bad form to cite unpublished papers, but what can I do?
Send me a self-addressed, self-stamped envelope, and I'll send you a copy.
US postage ok.)

Also see Lance Rips' "Mental muddles" in Brand & Harnish's _The representation
of knowledge and belief_.


--
Christopher D. Green                [e-mail]
Psychology Department               [e-mail]
University of Toronto
Toronto, Ontario M5S 1A1