What Can Philosophy and the Cognitive Sciences Give Each Other?

Abstract

The article explores some possible ways of interaction between philosophy and the specific cognitive scientific disciplines: psychology, neurosciences, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and anthropology. The author draws on V.A. Lektorsky’s idea of the dialogue between philosophy and the cognitive sciences. Philosophy and the cognitive sciences engage in a productive dialogue in which their mutual enrichment, the strengthening or weakening of certain scientific or philosophical theories, and theoretical progress can occur. On the one hand, it is asserted that philosophy can have the greatest impact on the development of the cognitive sciences in the way of clarifying problems of the philosophy of science. These problems encompass the problem of the theoretical progress of cognitive studies, the problem of the nature of individual cognitivist theories (as well as the nature of groups of individual theories such as connectionism, predictive processing, etc.), the problem of the relationship of cognitive disciplines to each other, and more. In addition, philosophers can contribute to discussions concerning the foundations of the cognitive sciences and their key concepts of representation and computation. They can also play a significant role in assessing the ethical implications of the emergence of new cognitive technologies and neurotechnologies. On the other hand, the specific cognitive disciplines can provide new insights into traditional philosophical issues, like the problem of consciousness and the brain, the problem of free will, and enrich the philosophy of science with novel empirical data.