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Explanation and Evaluation in Cognitive Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Richard Montgomery
Richard Montgomery*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy West Virginia University
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Abstract

With some regularity, cognitive scientists seem to introduce cognitive values into their explanations. After identifying examples of this practice, I sketch an account of psychological explanation that, under certain conditions, legitimizes value-laden cognitive explanations in which evaluative claims appear in the explanandum. I then present and discuss two applications of the proposed account in order to show its viability and explore its consequences.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 62 , Issue 2 , June 1995 , pp. 261 - 282
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 1995

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Footnotes

†

Ideas for this paper were first developed in connection with Jaegwon Kim's NEH Summer Seminar on Supervenience held at Brown University during the summer of 1990. Another NEH Summer Seminar, on the topic of Mental Representation, directed by Rob Cummins at the University of Arizona during the summer of 1993, led me to substantially rework those ideas. I wish to thank participants in both seminars for their help and encouragement, especially Professors Kim and Cummins. I also wish to thank my audience at the Lunchtime Colloquium Series at the University of Pittsburgh Center for Philosophy of Science, where an intermediate version of this paper was presented during Spring 1993, and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University, which supported my research during the summer of 1991 with a Riggle Fellowship in the Humanities. Additional thanks go to John Culler, John Heil, Stephen McCaffery, James Maffie, Alan Nelson, Merrilee Salmon, Daniel Shapiro, Mark Wicclair, and to an anonymous referee for Philosophy of Science. Final paper revisions were completed in Summer 1994, while I was the beneficiary of a Radiological Consultants Association Summer Research Fellowship at West Virginia University. For this support I thank the Radiological Consultants Association, the WVU Office of Academic Affairs and Research, and the WVU Foundation, Inc.

‡

Send reprint requests to the author, Department of Philosophy, West Virginia University, P.O. Box 6312, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA.

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