Here are a few meta-thoughts on what cognitive science might be, or was, or should become.
Núñez, R., Allen, M., Gao, R., Miller Rigoli, C., Relaford-Doyle, J., & Semenuks, A. (2019). What happened to cognitive science?. Nature human behaviour, 3(8), 782-791.
More than a half-century ago, the ‘cognitive revolution’, with the influential tenet ‘cognition is computation’, launched the investigation of the mind through a multidisciplinary endeavour called cognitive science. Despite significant diversity of views regarding its definition and intended scope, this new science, explicitly named in the singular, was meant to have a cohesive subject matter, complementary methods and integrated theories. Multiple signs, however, suggest that over time the prospect of an integrated cohesive science has not materialized. Here we investigate the status of the field in a data-informed manner,
focusing on four indicators, two bibliometric and two socio-institutional. These indicators consistently show that the devised multi-disciplinary program failed to transition to a mature inter-disciplinary coherent field. Bibliometrically, the field has been largely subsumed by (cognitive) psychology, and educationally, it exhibits a striking lack of curricular consensus, raising questions about the future of the cognitive science enterprise.
Dingemanse, M., Liesenfeld, A., Rasenberg, M., Albert, S., Ameka, F. K., Birhane, A., … & Wiltschko, M. (2023). Beyond single‐mindedness: A figure‐ground reversal for the cognitive sciences. Cognitive science, 47(1), e13230.
Beyond Single‐Mindedness: A Figure‐Ground Reversal for the Cognitive Sciences
A fundamental fact about human minds is that they are never truly alone: all minds are steeped in situated interaction. That social interaction matters is recognized by any experimentalist who seeks to exclude its influence by studying individuals in isolation. On this view, interaction complicates cognition. Here, we explore the more radical stance that interaction co-constitutes cognition: that we benefit from looking beyond single minds toward cognition as a process involving interacting minds. All around the cognitive sciences, there are approaches that put interaction center stage. Their diverse and pluralistic origins may obscure the fact that collectively, they harbor insights and methods that can respecify foundational assumptions and fuel novel interdisciplinary work. What might the cognitive sciences gain from stronger interactional foundations? This represents, we believe, one of the key questions for the future. Writing as a transdisciplinary collective assembled from across the classic cognitive science hexagon and beyond, we highlight the opportunity for a figure-ground reversal that puts interaction at the heart of cognition. The interactive stance is a way of seeing that deserves to be a key part of the conceptual toolkit of cognitive scientists.
The first is somewhat pessimistic. Is that pessimism warranted?
The second suggests a reorientation. Your task: Take the authors and look into why they might be more interested in interaction than individualism. Ask the same of the authors of the first piece. This means you have to find their professional home, look over their publications, and figure out where they are coming from.
Interdisciplinary Challenges 