Resumen de Howard Gardner: The Minds New Science

1. Definicin de ciencia cognitiva

I define cognitive science as a contemporary, empirically based effort to answer longstanding epistemological questions particularly those concerned with the nature of
knowledge, its components, its sources, its development, and its deployment.
Five features or aspects are generally associated with cognitive-scientific efforts, though
not every cognitive scientist embraces every feature (the first two features incorporate the
central beliefs of current cognitive science, the latter three concern methodological or
strategic characteristics)1:
1. The belief that, in talking about human cognitive activities, it is necessary to speak about
mental representations and to posit a level of analysis wholly separate from the biological
or neurological, on the one hand, and the sociological or cultural, on the other.
2. The faith that central to any understanding of the human mind is the electronic
computer. Not only are computers indispensable for carrying out studies of various sorts,
but, more crucially, the computer also serves as the most viable model of how the human
mind functions.
3. The deliberate decision to de-emphasize certain factors which may be important for
cognitive functioning but whose inclusion at this point would unnecessarily complicate the
cognitive-scientific enterprise. These factors include the influence of affective factors or
emotions, the contribution of historical and cultural factors, and the role of the background
context in which particular actions or thoughts occur.
4. The faith that much is to be gained from interdisciplinary studies. At present most
cognitive scientists are drawn from the ranks of specific disciplines in particular,
philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, anthropology, and neuroscience
(I shall refer to these disciplines severally as the "cognitive sciences"). The hope is that
some day the boundaries between these disciplines may become attenuated or perhaps
disappear altogether, yielding a single, unified cognitive science.
5. The claim that a key ingredient in contemporary cognitive science is the agenda of
issues, and the set of concerns, which have long exercised epistemologists in the Western
philosophical tradition. To my mind, it is virtually unthinkable that cognitive science
would exist, let alone assume its current form, had there not been a philosophical tradition
dating back to the time of the Greeks.

2. El establecimiento de los fundamentos de la ciencia cognitiva

El Hixon Symposium y el desafo al conductismo
-Hixon Symposium (Septiembre de 1948): Cerebral Mechanisms in Behavior.
1 Estos aspectos determinan un parecido de familia, ms que una definicin en trminos de
condiciones necesarias y suficientes.

-Rango amplio de temas de discusin: comparacin cerebro-computadora (von Neumann,

matemtico), paralelo entre sistema nervioso y dispositivos lgicos (W. McCulloch,
matemtico y neurofisilogo).
-Lashley (psiclogo): The Problem of Serial Order in Behavior: descubrimiento de los
componentes necesarios para una ciencia cognitiva y ataque a las fuerzas que impedan su
surgimiento.
-Contexto disciplinar de la psicologa de Lashley:
(a) Comienzos de siglo: insercin de mtodos experimentales en investigacin
psicolgica, pero con predominio de la introspeccin (que no permita la
acumulacin de conocimiento crucial para la ciencia).
(b) Ataque conductista al introspeccionismo (Pavlov, Skinner, Thorndike, Watson,
1920s-1940s):
i. Tesis 1: el psiclogo debe restringirse a mtodos pblicos de investigacin,
que cualquier cientfico pueda aplicar y cuantificar;
ii. Tesis 2: el psiclogo debe enfocarse exclusivamente en la conducta,
abandonando temas como la mente, el pensamiento, la imaginacin, los
planes, los deseos, los smbolos, las ideas, etc.
iii. Supuesto: los individuos son reflectores pasivos de las fuerzas y factores del
entorno, no actan por sus propios eventos mentales internos.
-Crticas de Lashley al conductismo:
(a) Para que los descubrimientos sobre el cerebro o las computadoras impacten en la
psicologa es necesario confrontar el conductismo.
(b) Cualquier teora de la actividad humana debe explicar conductas complejas
(especialmente las lingsticas), que por su dificultad no han sido consideradas por
el conductismo.
(c) El marco terico de la neurofisiologa (cadenas asociativas simples entre estmulos
y respuestas) no puede dar cuenta de conductas serialmente ordenadas, porque la
velocidad de la conducta es mayor que la que requerira la cadena causal, y porque
ciertos errores en estas conductas muestran una anticipacin a lo que debera
seguirse segn la cadena causal. Conclusin: las secuencias conductuales deben ser
planificadas previamente, de manera jerrquica (comienza con planes ms generales
y se prosigue con los de grano ms fino). La estructuracin cerebral determina la
manera en que el individuo responder a un estmulo.
(d) El sistema nervioso no est, como sostiene el conductismo, mayormente inactivo, y
es falso que reflejos aislados se activan slo cuando formas especficas de estmulos
aparecen: el sistema nervioso consiste en un conjunto de unidades activas y
organizadas jerrquicamente, en la que el control emana desde el centro, y el
estmulo queda relegado a la periferia.
Un momento crtico en la historia de la ciencia
-Otros impedimentos para el cognitivismo: las escuelas filosficas (positivismo, fisicismo,
verificacionismo) que desdeaban entidades inobservables e incapaces de medir; la
intoxicacin con psicoanlisis, que era incapaz de construir una ciencia a partir de
entrevistas clnicas e historias personales retrospectivas, y constitua un campo no
susceptible a la refutacin; la destruccin del establishment cientfico europeo por parte del
totalitarismo; el cambio de agenda del establishment cientfico norteamericano durante la
segunda guerra mundial.

-Consecuencias positivas de la guerra: estmulo de ciertas actividades cientficas y

tecnolgicas. Tuvo lugar el surgimiento de las computadoras, para realizar grandes
clculos. Hubo desarrollos de ingeniera (como la maquinaria antiarea desarrollada por N.
Wiener) que permitieron ciertas analogas entre las nuevas tecnologas y los procesos
nerviosos o mentales que permitan desarrollar ideas de planificacin, propsito y feedback
con precisin matemtica. Los mdicos obtuvieron nueva informacin sobre el cerebro en
sus tratamientos a los heridos por la guerra. Los psiclogos estudiaron los efectos de la
propaganda y la seleccin de hombres apropiados para conducir unidades de combate.
-Hacia fines de los 40 se comenz a notar la necesidad de una nueva y definitiva ofensiva
cientfica a la mente humana. Gran parte del trabajo que se complet en la posguerra surga
de esfuerzos tericos previos que haban sido oscurecidos por el conductismo o que haban
sido transformados por los eventos de la guerra de maneras no anticipadas. Estas ideas
constituyeron los inputs tericos clave de la ciencia cognitiva.
Los inputs tericos clave de la ciencia cognitiva
Matemtica y computacin
-Hacia el cambio de siglo Gottlob Frege desarroll una nueva forma de lgica que destron
a la lgica silogstica de Aristteles que haba perdurado hasta entonces. Esta nueva lgica
involucraba la manipulacin de smbolos abstractos. A comienzos del siglo XX, Russell y
Whitehead intentaron reducir las leyes bsicas de la aritmtica a proposiciones de la nueva
lgica, y su trabajo tuvo influencia sobre matemticos como Wiener y von Neumann, que
contribuyeron a fundar la ciencia cognitiva.
-El trabajo lgico-matemtico ms importante para la ciencia cognitiva fue desarrollado por
el entonces desconocido matemtico Alan Turing durante los 30s. En 1936 desarroll una
nocin de mquina simple, la mquina de Turing, que en principio poda hacer cualquier
clculo posible. Esta mquina terica requera slo una cinta infinitamente larga que
pudiera pasar por la mquina, y un escner que leyera lo que estaba en la cinta, la cual
estaba dividida en cuadrados idnticos que o bien estaban en blanco o bien contenan una
barra. La mquina poda hacer cuatro movimientos con la cinta: moverla hacia la izquierda,
moverla hacia la derecha, borrar la barra o imprimir la barra. Slo con estas cuatro
operaciones la mquina poda ejecutar cualquier programa expresado en un cdigo binario
(como el cdigo de espacios en blanco y barras).
-El teorema de Turing y su demostracin fue de importancia para la investigacin sobre
dispositivos computadores, pues sugiri que un cdigo binario, compuesto slo de ceros y
unos, hara posible el desarrollo y la ejecucin de un nmero indefinido de programas, y
que en principio era posible construir mquinas que operaran con ese principio.
-Turing incluso sugiri, en 1950, que uno poda programar una mquina para que sea
imposible para un interlocutor discriminar sus respuestas de las de un ser humano. Esta
nocin fue llamada el test de Turing, el cual es usado para refutar a quien dude que una
mquina puede pensar: si un observador no puede distinguir las respuestas de una mquina
de las de un humano, entonces la mquina pasa el test de Turing.
-Los interesados en el pensamiento humano se dieron cuenta de que si podan describir con
precisin los procesos de conducta y pensamiento de un organismo, podran disear una
computadora que operara de manera idntica. Esto permita testear en computadoras las
distintas concepciones sobre el funcionamiento del ser humano, e incluso construir
computadoras que uno pudiera considerar que piensan como humanos.

-Partiendo de ideas de Turing, von Neumann desarroll la idea de disear un programa que
instruyera a la mquina de Turing a reproducirse a s misma. Esta fue la idea de un
programa almacenado: la computadora era controlada por un programa que se almacenaba
en su memoria interna, de modo que no tuviera que ser reprogramada para cada nueva
tarea. sta fue la primera vez que se concibi que una computadora poda preparar y
ejecutar sus propios programas.
El modelo neuronal
-W. McCulloch y el lgico W. Pitts mostraron en 1943 que las operaciones de una clula
nerviosa y sus conexiones con otras clulas nerviosas (una red neural) poda ser
modelada en trminos de la lgica. Los nervios podan ser pensados como enunciados
lgicos, y la propiedad de activacin o no activacin de nervios poda ser comparada con la
operacin del clculo proposicional en la que un enunciado es verdadero o falso. As como
una proposicin puede implicar otra, la activacin de una neurona conduce a la activacin
de otra. La conclusin era que todo lo que poda ser descrito exhaustivamente y sin
ambigedad es realizable por una red neural finita apropiada.
-Gracias a esta idea, la nocin de mquina de Turing se perfilaba en dos direcciones: hacia
un sistema nervioso compuesto de innumerables neuronas todo o nada (activadas o
desactivadas), y hacia una computadora que pudiera realizar cualquier proceso descrito sin
ambigedad. Mientras Turing haba mostrado la posibilidad en principio de mquinas
computadoras de gran poder, McCulloch y Pitts demostraron que una de esas mquinas, el
cerebro humano, poda ser pensado como operando por los principios de la lgica, y
entonces como una computadora poderosa.
-McCulloch sostuvo que los problemas fundamentales de la epistemologa pueden
formularse y resolverse slo a la luz del sistema nervioso central, y at sus afirmaciones
sobre el pensamiento demasiado fuertemente a los conocimientos de su tiempo sobre el
sistema nervioso. Se le critica que su analoga entre la lgica y el cerebro es demasiado
directa, y que en realidad debe buscar analogas en un nivel ms alto (McCarthy).
-Uno de sus adelantos fue el apoyo a la investigacin sobre las propiedades especficas de
las clulas nerviosas individuales, lo cual ayudo a entender algunos de los aspectos ms
importantes del sistema nervioso. Adems, actualmente revive en ciencias de la
computacin las ideas sobre la naturaleza y las conexiones de las clulas nerviosas.
La sntesis ciberntica
-Durante sus trabajos en los 30s y 40s sobre servomecanismos, N. Wiener comenz a
pensar en la naturaleza del feedback y de los sistemas auto-correctores y auto-regulatorios,
sean mecnicos o humanos. Colabor con V. Bush, que fue pionero en el desarrollo de
computadoras analgicas, y le interesaba el trabajo de McCulloch y Pitts. Sin embargo, fue
ms lejos que todos sus contemporneos con la conviccin en la coherencia entre estos
variados desarrollos cientficos y tecnolgicos.
-Wiener concibi estos nuevos desarrollos como constituyendo una nueva ciencia, centrada
en temas de control y comunicacin. Para l los problemas en ingeniera del control y de la
comunicacin eran inseparables, al centrarse no en las tcnicas de la ingeniera elctrica,
sino en la nocin de mensaje, sea ste transmitido por medios elctricos, mecnicos o
nerviosos.
-Con sus colaboradores Rosenblueth y Bigelow, Wiener introdujo la idea de que es legtimo
hablar de mquinas que exhiben feedback como motivadas por fines, como calculando las

diferencias entre sus fines y sus ejecuciones reales, y como trabajando para reducir esas
diferencias.
-Tambin desarrollaron una nueva nocin de sistema nervioso central. ste no es ms un
rgano auto-contenido, que recibe inputs de los sentidos y realiza descargas sobre los
msculos. Por el contrario, algunas de sus caractersticas ms singulares slo pueden ser
explicadas como procesos circulares que emergen del sistema nervioso hacia los msculos,
y reingresan en el sistema nervioso por los rganos sensoriales, sean propiocepctores u
rganos de los sentidos especiales. Esto signific un nuevo paso en el estudio de la parte de
la neurofisiologa que se ocupaba del sistema nervioso como un todo integrado. Estas ideas
son anlogas a las crticas de Lashley al conductismo.
-En 1948 integr sus ideas sobre el sistema nervioso, la computadora electrnica y la
operacin de otras mquinas en la nueva ciencia de la ciberntica, definida como el campo
completo de la teora del control y la comunicacin, sea en la mquina o en el animal. No
obstante, esta sntesis no es ms que un ejemplo pionero, y gan ms adeptos en la URSS
que dentro de la ciencia cognitiva.
La teora de la informacin
-A C. Shannon, un ingeniero electrnico, se le atribuye el desarrollo de la teora de la
informacin. A fines de los 30s vio que los principios de la lgica (en trminos de
proposiciones verdaderas y falsas), podan ser usados para describir los dos estados
(encendido y apagado) de los conmutadores de transmisin electromecnicos
(electromechanical relay switch), de modo que circuitos elctricos como los de las
computadoras podan encarnar operaciones fundamentales del pensamiento.
-Junto con W. Weaver, Shannon desarroll la nocin clave de la teora de la informacin: la
informacin puede ser pensada de forma enteramente divorciada del contenido especfico,
como siendo simplemente una decisin entre dos alternativas igualmente plausibles. La
unidad bsica de la informacin es el bit (dgito binario), y es la cantidad de informacin
requerida para seleccionar un mensaje de dos alternativas igualmente probables.
-La intuicin de Wiener [Shannon??] hizo posible que se pensara a la informacin con
independencia de un dispositivo de transmisin particular, posibilitando un enfoque en la
eficacia de cualquier comunicacin de mensajes por cualquier mecanismo. De este modo,
uno poda considerar a los procesos cognitivos con independencia de cualquier
corporizacin particular, oportunidad que sera aprovechada por los psiclogos que
pretendan describir los mecanismos subyacentes al procesamiento de cualquier
informacin.
-Recientemente se ha cuestionado entre los cientficos cognitivos la idea de que es posible
tratar toda la informacin de forma equivalente, ignorando cuestiones de contenido.
Los sndromes neurofisiolgicos
-Durante las guerras se aprendi mucho sobre la afasia (dficit en el lenguaje), la agnosia
(dificultad en el reconocimiento) y otras formas de patologa mental que surgan como
consecuencia del dao cerebral.
-Uno de los descubrimientos fue que haba similitudes en las patologas que traspasaban los
lmites culturales y lingsticos, lo cual era un indicador de que las capacidades cognitivas
en el sistema nervioso se organizan con ms regularidad que la permitida por explicaciones
puramente ambientales de los procesos mentales.

-Adems, los patrones de colapso no podan ser explicados en trminos de una disrupcin
entre estmulo y respuesta, sino en trminos de una jerarqua de respuestas conductuales
alteradas.
-Los perfiles de habilidades y discapacidades que emergen con el dao cerebral provey de
sugerencias fecundas acerca de cmo puede estar organizada la mente humana en
individuos normales.
Encuentros catalticos y escritos influyentes
-Hubo numerosos encuentros entre estos interesados en temas de cognicin (de los cuales el
Hixon Symposium fue slo uno, aunque de especial importancia por las ideas manifestadas
all sobre la conexin cerebro-computadora y sobre el desafo al conductismo), y un
nmero significativo de publicaciones (como Design for a Brain de Ashby, los escritos de
lingstica de Jakobson, los de neuropsicologa de Hebb, los de antropologa de Bateson, y
los trabajos de Bartlett, Lvi-Strauss, Luria, Piaget y Vygotsky) que ayudaron a promover
una nueva ciencia interdisciplinar de la mente.
-En gran medida todos estos desarrollos tuvieron lugar fuera de los campos de estudios
establecidos, como actividades extracurriculares desde la perspectiva de las lneas
predominantes (psicologa conductista, lingstica estructural, antropologa social
funcionalista, neuropsicologa del aprendizaje animal). Hizo falta eventos ms dramticos
para que estos desarrollos adquirieran un lugar central.
[Hiptesis para trabajo: el rol preponderante de lo institucional en la constitucin de la
ciencia cognitiva (por sobre las crticas al conductismo)].

3. La ciencia cognitiva: las primeras dcadas

Una fecha de nacimiento consensuada
-Parece haber un consenso en que la ciencia cognitiva fue reconocida oficialmente en 1956.
En este ao tuvo lugar el Simposio de Teora de la Informacin en el MIT, en el que Newell
y Simon presentaron la primera prueba completa de un teorema llevada a cabo por una
computadora, Chomsky present su propio enfoque sobre la gramtica, y Miller su trabajo
sobre la memoria a corto plazo. Por aquella poca el lenguaje del procesamiento de
informacin lleg a la psicologa, mbito en el que surgieron los trabajos de Bruner,
Goodnow, Austin y Miller. Se public The Computer and the Brain de von Neumann. En
neurociencia se registraron impulsos de neuronas nicas del sistema nervioso. Surgi la
antropologa cognitiva o etnosemntica. Comenz a desarrollarse la inteligencia artificial.
En filosofa, se us la metfora computacional para resolver los problemas filosficos
clsicos acerca de la mente: se concibi al cerebro como el hardware computacional y a la
mente como el software. Paralelamente, hubo algunos desarrollos en etologa animal.
1960: fortalecimiento
-Durante los 60s germinaron las semillas plantadas en los 50s. La ciencia cognitiva
obtuvo apoyo financiero gubernamental y privado, y su insercin acadmica (especialmente
desde la fundacin en 1960 del Center for Cognitive Studies en Harvard) permiti que
tuviera nuevos adeptos.

-Ciertos libros sirvieron para difundir las ideas en boga. En Plans and the Structure of
Behavior, de 1960, Miller, Pribram y Galanter criticaron la idea de arco reflejo de la
psicologa conductista y adoptaron un enfoque ciberntico de la conducta. Unos aos
despus comenzaron a aparecer libros de textos de psicologa cognitiva, siendo Cognitive
Psychology de Ulric Neisser, de 1967, el ms influyente (si bien criticaba varios puntos
importantes de la metfora computacional de la mente). En The Sciences of the Artificial
(1969), Simon provea una explicacin filosfica de su enfoque: tanto la computadora
como la mente humana son entidades fsicas que procesan, transforman, elaboran y
manipulan smbolos de varios tipos. En 1972, Newell y Simon publican Human Problem
Solving, en donde describen los programas solucionadores de problemas. En 1964, Fodor y
Katz editaron The Structure of Language, en donde reunieron artculos acerca de la nueva
lingstica. Computers and Thought, editados en 1963 por Feigenbaum y Feldman, y
Semantic Information Processing, editado en 1968 por Minsky, presentaban los nuevos
avances en inteligencia artificial. En el campo de la antropologa se destac Cognitive
Anthropology (1969) de Tyler.
-El clima intelectual predominante era que se estaba desarrollando una revolucin similar a
la revolucin en fsica del siglo XVII: se crea que haba muchos descubrimientos por
hacer, que se tena el mtodo apropiado para hacerlos, que se requera una nueva
matemtica, una nueva ontologa y un nuevo punto de vista sobre el mtodo cientfico, y
que se deba pelear contra hbitos intelectuales e institucionales obsoletos.
La iniciativa de Sloan
-La fundacin privada Alfred P. Sloan Foundation estimul a comienzos de los 70s un
programa de neurociencias, un conjunto de disciplinas que exploran el sistema nervioso,
que incluyen la neuropsicologa, la neurofisiologa, la neuroanatoma y la neuroqumica.
-La fundacin tena inters en financiar otro proyecto similar, y los cientficos cognitivos
lograron convencer 1976 a la fundacin de que financiara con veinte millones de dlares un
proyecto en esta disciplina.
-La iniciativa de la Sloan Foundation tuvo un efecto cataltico sobre el desarrollo del campo
de la ciencia cognitiva. Se fund la revista Cognitive Science, cuyo primer nmero fue
publicado en 1977, y en 1979 se fund una sociedad con el mismo nombre. Se
desparramaron programas, cursos, peridicos y el resto de la parafernalia escolar acerca de
la ciencia cognitiva, incluyendo libros de divulgacin como The Universe Within (1982) de
Hunt y esta misma obra.
-Esta declaracin del nacimiento de un campo disciplinar fue vitalizante, pero no aseguraba
un consenso interno, ni un progreso cientfico apreciable. Haba tensiones acerca de cul
era el campo, quin lo entenda, quin lo amenazaba, y en qu direccin deba progresar.
-Un sntoma de esta falta de consenso fue el State of the Art Report de la Sloan
Foundation. Ese reporte deca que la razn de ser de ese campo disciplinar era un objetivo
de investigacin comn: descubrir las capacidades representacionales y computacionales de
la mente y su representacin estructural y funcional en el cerebro. Present adems un
esbozo de las interrelaciones disciplinares que ya se haban forjado (filosofa-psicologa,
filosofa-lingstica, psicologa-lingstica, psicologa-IA, psicologa-antropologa,
psicologa-neurociencia, lingstica-IA, lingstica-antropologa, lingstica-neurociencia,
antropologa-neurociencia) y de las que quedaban por forjar (filosofa-IA, filosofaantropologa, filosofa-neurociencia, IA-antropologa). La comunidad recibi
negativamente el reporte, posiblemente porque cada cientfico lo ley desde su propia

disciplina, y percibi el esfuerzo ecumnico de sus autores como un insulto a sus

disciplinas o programas de investigacin particulares. Adems, como no hay un paradigma
acordado, ningn conjunto comn de supuestos y mtodos, los cientficos cognitivos suelen
proyectar sus propios paradigmas a la totalidad del campo.
-A pesar de esta falta de consensos, podemos esbozar una formulacin tentativa del campo
de la ciencia cognitiva.
Aspectos clave de la ciencia cognitiva
-Los primeros dos aspectos que veremos representan los supuestos centrales del campo,
mientras que los otros tres son aspectos metodolgicos o estratgicos.
Representaciones
-Es legtimo y necesario postular un nivel separado de anlisis: el nivel de la
representacin.
-Las entidades propias de este nivel son las entidades representacionales: smbolos, reglas,
imgenes las representaciones que se encuentra entre el input y el output. En este nivel se
investiga los modos en que estas entidades representacionales se agrupan, se transforman o
se contrastan con otras.
-El cientfico cognitivo no niega que para algunos propsitos vale explicar la conducta en
trminos de clulas nerviosas, de influencias culturales, o de eventos experienciales o
fenomenolgicos. Sin embargo, para los fines cientficos propone a las entidades
representacionales como las ms adecuadas para esta explicacin.
-Hay un abismo enorme entre los conceptos representacionales ordinarios (ideas, imgenes,
smbolos, lenguaje de la mente) y los conceptos que pueden ser aceptados como constructos
cientficos aceptables. Antes de postular este nuevo nivel se debe mostrar su absoluta
necesidad, y se debe describir la estructura y los mecanismos que son empleados en ese
nivel.
-Algunos crticos de la ciencia cognitiva critican la postulacin de este nuevo nivel, desde
una concepcin conductista y aplicando la navaja de Ockham: conviene hablar slo de
estructuras neurolgicas y de conductas visibles, y no de ideas, conceptos o reglas.
-Otros crticos aceptan que se requiere un lenguaje de sentido comn que utilice conceptos
como los de planes, intenciones y creencias para explicar las conductas, pero que no es
necesario un lenguaje cientfico separado y un nivel representacional de anlisis: se puede
ir directamente del lenguaje intencional ordinario al sistema nervioso, porque es en el
sistema nervioso en donde estn representados los estados intencionales.
-Tambin hay discusiones entre los que aceptan la postulacin del nivel representacional:
algunos postulan que hay una nica forma de representacin mental, que tiene estructura
proposicional; otros sostienen que hay al menos dos formas, una con estructura
proposicional y otra con estructura de imagen; otros sostienen que se pueden postular
mltiples formas y que es imposible determinar cul es la correcta.
-Si bien todos los cientficos cognitivos aceptan que los procesos mentales estn en ltima
instancia representados en el sistema nervioso central, no hay acuerdo acerca de la
relevancia de la neurociencia para las investigaciones sobre cognicin. La mayora cree que
la ciencia cognitiva puede desarrollarse con independencia de conocimientos detallados del
sistema nervioso, sobre la base de que aun no poseemos esos conocimientos y de que se
acepta el nivel de representacin mental como autnomo. Con la consolidacin del nivel
cognitivo y los avances de las neurociencias esa distancia puede ser salvada. No es de

extraar que a los neurocientficos les entusiasme menos el nivel representacional que a los
psiclogos, lingistas y cientficos de la computacin.
Computadoras
-La computadora sirve, en primer lugar, como un modelo del pensamiento humano: si una
mquina puede razonar, tener objetivos, revisar su conducta, transformar informacin, etc.,
entonces los seres humanos merecen ser caracterizados del mismo modo.
-En segundo lugar, la computadora sirve como una herramienta de trabajo.
-Algunos crticos sostienen que la computadora es otro modelo mecnico errneo ms que
se propone para explicar la cognicin humana. Consideran que es un error ver a los
organismos activos como sistemas procesadores de informacin. El hecho de que se pueda
simular la conducta no quiere decir que se haya alcanzado una descripcin correcta de la
conducta.
-El involucramiento con el modelo computacional es diferente en las distintas disciplinas
que constituyen la ciencia cognitiva. Ese involucramiento es central en inteligencia
artificial, y es aceptado con algunas reservas en la lingstica y la psicologa. En la
antropologa y la neurociencia la cuestin es ms problemtica, en la medida en que unos
consideran suficientes las explicaciones cerebrales y otros las culturales. En filosofa hay
actitudes variadas: desde un entusiasmo descarado a un escepticismo virulento.
Menos nfasis en el afecto, el contexto, la cultura y la historia
-Si bien la exclusin de factores afectivos, contextuales, culturales e histricos en la
explicacin de la conducta no es una tesis explcita de la ortodoxia cognitivista, es claro que
en la prctica esos factores son apartados, incluso por los antroplogos cognitivos.
-Esta exclusin puede deberse a su practicidad: la ciencia cognitiva no puede pretender
incluir todos los factores, no sera capaz de construir una explicacin completa de la accin,
y los factores individuales pueden constituir una explicacin bastante buena.
-Algunos crticos del cognitivismo sostienen que los mencionados factores no pueden ser
explicados por la ciencia, porque pertenecen a dimensiones inherentemente humansticas o
estticas, pero juegan un rol central en la experiencia humana.
-Otros crticos reconocen tambin que estos factores juegan un rol central, pero creen que
son susceptibles de explicacin cientfica: la ciencia cognitiva debe incorporarlos.
Creencia en los estudios interdisciplinarios
-Hay acuerdo en que no hay una ciencia cognitiva. En realidad, hay investigadores
procedentes de diferentes disciplinas que creen que pueden interactuar productivamente
para lograr una comprensin ms poderosa de la que podran lograr si trabajaran desde una
nica disciplina.
-Algunos escpticos sostienen que no se progresa componiendo disciplinas, y que es ms
conveniente que cada una ocupe su lugar.
-Otra crtica es que no es claro qu disciplinas contribuirn en ltima instancia a la ciencia
cognitiva, por lo que se puede perder mucho tiempo en colaboraciones infructuosas.
-En el mejor de los casos, para estos crticos debe haber cooperacin entre disciplinas, pero
nunca una fusin total.
Enraizamiento en problemas filosficos clsicos

-Los problemas filosficos clsicos son un ingrediente clave de la ciencia cognitiva, si bien
no todos los cientficos cognitivos lo consideran as.
-Slo mediante la exploracin de la historia de la filosofa puede mostrar a los cientficos
cognitivos que estn tratando temas que fueron abordados antes por filsofos. Los
cientficos cognitivos pueden criticar que los problemas filosficos fueron mal formulados,
o no fueron resueltos, y que los filsofos hoy no tienen un rol que jugar en la ciencia
cognitiva. Incluso los propios filsofos pueden pensar eso. Sin embargo, eso no quita que
convenga revisar las concepciones filosficas del conocimiento humano.

5. Psicologa: el casamiento de los mtodos con la sustancia

El programa de la psicologa cognitiva
-Contra el conductismo, los nuevos enfoques hablaban de limitaciones estructurales a la
cantidad de informacin que puede ser tomada, intentaban trazar los pasos involucrados en
el procesamiento de esa informacin, y de postular estrategias generales para resolver
problemas. El centro de atencin se dirigi a las representaciones de la informacin dentro
de la mente.
-Este cambio no se debe a un nico factor, pero el surgimiento de la computadora y del
lenguaje de teora de la informacin que se us para caracterizarla ayud a legitimarlo.
-Hay una distincin entre unidades de anlisis moleculares o de pequea escala y unidades
de anlisis molares o de gran escala. As, algunos programas, como los de psicofsica
tradicionales y los de procesamiento de informacin contemporneos, muestran una
inclinacin por unidades de menor escala (bits, perceptos individuales, asociaciones
simples examinadas en breves perodos de tiempo), presuponiendo que slo mediante un
entendimiento de las unidades y procesos elementales es posible construir una explicacin
definitiva de las unidades y procesos complejos. Por el contrario, quienes proponen un
enfoque molar se inclinan por unidades de gran escala (problemas afrontados durante un
largo perodo de tiempo, esquemas, marcos, estrategias), a las que consideran las
propiedades ms prominentes de la cognicin humana, y por tanto sirven como punto de
partida lgico: las unidades ms grandes parecen ms cercanas a los datos y las
experiencias de la vida ordinaria.
-Esta distincin entre enfoques molares y moleculares se parece, pero no es idntica, a la
distincin entre enfoques arriba-abajo y abajo-arriba. Los enfoques arriba-abajo, de
connotaciones racionalistas, suponen que el sujeto lleva a la tarea sus propios esquemas,
estrategias o marcos que influencian fuertemente sus actuaciones. Los enfoques abajoarriba, de connotaciones empiristas, suponen que los detalles de una situacin o tarea
focalizada ejercen una influencia primaria sobre la actuacin del sujeto.
-Si bien estas dos distinciones no estn lgicamente ligadas, tpicamente se corresponden,
por lo que con frecuencia las identificaremos.
-La exageracin de esta dicotoma conduce a una distorsin del campo: casi todos los
psiclogos tienen simpata por ambos enfoques, y muchos se mueven constantemente de
abordajes moleculares a molares. Adems, la eleccin de un enfoque no necesariamente se
realiza por considerarlo primordial: uno puede preferir un enfoque molecular no porque
piense que la conducta se explica en ltima instancia en trminos moleculares, sino con el
fin de adaptar posteriormente los mtodos a entidades molares.

-Otra tendencia a tener en cuenta es la creciente fisura y especializacin dentro de la

psicologa. Muchos psiclogos ignoran lo que acontece en el resto del campo, dificultando
el desarrollo de conceptos unificadores.
-Tambin hay que mencionar la tendencia a la perfeccin metodolgica. El diseo de
estudios individuales y de conjuntos de estudios se ha hecho cada vez ms elegante con la
invencin de nuevos instrumentos y la sofisticacin de las tcnicas estadsticas. Esta
sofisticacin es un logro positivo, pero no ha sido integrado completamente con la sustancia
de la disciplina. Muchas cuestiones deben ser abordadas desde un enfoque molar, y estos
mtodos ms rigurosos muchas veces no son apropiados para este enfoque.
Enfoques abajo-arriba
El nmero 7 mgico de George Miller
-En su artculo de 1956 El nmero siete mgico, ms o menos dos: algunos lmites de
nuestra capacidad para procesar informacin Miller mostr que las habilidades del
individuo para hacer distinciones absolutas entre estmulos, para distinguir un fonema de
otro, para estimar nmeros con exactitud y para recordar un nmero de objetos discretos en
todos los casos parecan sufrir un cabio crucial cercano al nivel de los siete objetos. Si el
nmero era menor, los individuos podan hacer esas tareas sin dificultades; si era mayor,
comenzaban a fallar.
-Esta discontinuidad para Miller no era accidental, sino que surga o bien por aprendizaje o
bien por el diseo de nuestros sistemas nerviosos.
-Los humanos desarrollan modos de superar esas limitaciones: pueden agrupar elementos y
tratarlos como una unidad, o hacer juicios relativos en vez de absolutos, o recodificar la
informacin en un lenguaje y recordar este simbolismo ms abstracto.
-El ensayo de Miller fue importante por varias razones: (i) porque agrup un conjunto de
datos dispersos para que apuntaran a una misma conclusin, (ii) porque al sealar que el
nmero 7 no era accidental apunt a investigar la naturaleza y estructura del mecanismo de
procesamiento cognitivo, (iii) porque sealaba modos de trascender las limitaciones, y (iv)
porque prometa conectar los datos recogidos durante aos por los psiclogos con los
nuevos enfoques de los cientficos orientados a la ingeniera.
El enfoque britnico al procesamiento de informacin
-En Gran Bretaa hubo otro movimiento que intentaba aplicar conceptos de la ciencia de la
comunicacin a la psicologa, el cual surgi del trabajo de los psiclogos durante la
Segunda Guerra Mundial.
-Colin Cherry se concentr en las capacidades de los individuos para obtener informacin
de canales ruidosos. Hizo que los sujetos se concentraran en un mensaje transmitido por un
odo, y descubri que no podan decir mucho de lo que les llegaba por el odo opuesto, al
que no prestaban atencin; a lo sumo podan mencionar caractersticas gruesas de la seal
(como si era msica o discurso), pero no cambios en el contenido o el idioma.
-Donald Broadbent les present conjuntos de tres dgitos de manera simultnea a ambos
odos. Descubri que los sujetos cometan menos errores cuando decan los dgitos
presentados a un odo primero, y luego los presentados (al mismo tiempo) al otro.
-Estos trabajos dieron origen a un modelo de los procesos de pensamiento que se pareca al
empirismo. Comenzaba con informacin de los sentidos, pero se concentraba en el hecho

de que los individuos tienen una capacidad limitada para la toma y el almacenamiento de
informacin. Adems, en lugar de hablar de los lmites estructurales de un modo esttico,
Cherry y Broadbent buscaron determinar precisamente lo que sucede con esta informacin
desde el momento en que se la recibe. As, Broadbent fue el primer psiclogo moderno en
describir el funcionamiento cognitivo con un diagrama de flujo.
El enfoque estratgico de Jerome Bruner
-En colaboracin con Jacqueline Goodnow y George Austin, Bruner public en 1956 A
Study of Thinking, el cual creci del Cognition Project que Bruner dirigi en Harvard. El
tema del libro era la clasificacin, categorizacin, o formacin/adquisicin de conceptos. El
problema era cmo una persona, frente a un conjunto de elementos, llegaba a agruparlos en
categoras.
-Los experimentos de Bruner consistan en indicarle al sujeto una determinada categora, y
mostrarle objetos para que diga si pertenecen o no a la categora.
-Si bien este tipo de experimentos era similar a otros anteriores, diferan en que Bruner no
conceba a los sujetos como simple reactores a estmulos, sino como solucionadores de
problemas activos y constructivos. Trat de analizar las propiedades informacionales de
largas secuencias de acciones, llamadas estrategias (escaneo sucesivo, focalizacin
conservativa, focalizacin apostadora). Bruner descubri que el mejor modo de explicar los
actos individuales es en trminos de esos patrones generales o estrategias, ms que en
trminos de respuestas particulares a estmulos particulares.
Etapas posteriores del procesamiento de informacin
-Durante los 60s se precisaron algunos detalles del procesamiento de informacin a partir
de los trabajos de Brodabent. Se destacan los trabajos de Moray y Treisman.
-Nielssen propuso una explicacin informacional ms compleja. Argument que un sujeto
entiende una seal sintetizando una representacin interna que se asocia con la seal.
-Posteriormente, Broadbent revis su modelo unidireccional de la atencin, cambindolo
por uno de ida y vuelta.
-Sperling hizo experimentos para mostrar cunta informacin de una sola vez puede tomar
un individuo por medio de la visin.
-Sternberg estudi los detalles finos del procesamiento de informacin, llegando incluso a
mediciones de tiempo.
Un modelo de la memoria
-Atkinson y Shiffrin propusieron un modelo influyente segn el cual la memoria posea tres
almacenes: uno donde se registran inmediatamente los estmulos dentro del sistema
sensorial apropiado, uno de corto plazo en donde la informacin entrante decae y
desaparece rpidamente pero puede pasar al almacn de largo plazo.
-Allport critic la idea de que el input informacional es serial (bits entrando uno tras otro en
un solo punto), defendiendo que es paralelo (hay mltiples entradas en mltiples puntos).
-Shannon sostuvo que la informacin contextual afecta el procesamiento de la informacin
sensorial, por lo que un modelo abajo-arriba o afuera-adentro que trate los bits de
informacin con independencia de su significado y contexto de presentacin no har
justicia a la cognicin humana.
-Las etapas del modelo de Atkinson y Shiffrin comienzan a diluirse cuando uno examina la
cuestin ms atentamente: la memoria a corto plazo no puede ser tan fcilmente separada

de la memoria intermedia, los procesos pre-atentos se mezclan con los buffers sensoriales,
etc.
Enfoques arriba-abajo
Unidades de anlisis molares
-Estudios desarrollados por Bransford muestran que los sujetos no tienden a recordar la
formulacin exacta de las oraciones que encuentran, pero s los significados de las
oraciones. Esto demuestra que los individuos utilizan enfoques inferenciales e integradores
al memorizar fragmentos del lenguaje, lo cual hace dudar de aquellos experimentos que se
enfocan en la memoria de slabas o frases que no tienen sentido. Los sujetos utilizan
distintos esquemas organizadores que determinan el modo en que se interpreta la misma
informacin sensorial. Adems, los sujetos infieren algunas cosas de las oraciones que
escuchan, y que muchas de sus respuestas se basan en esas inferencias, no en el contenido
literal de las oraciones.
-Rumelhart ha postulado la existencia de una gramtica para las historias: un conjunto de
supuestos subyacentes acerca de cmo debe desarrollarse la trama de una historia. Esta
gramtica afecta el modo en que los sujetos interpretan historias: suelen recordar ms
fcilmente aquellas historias que respetan la gramtica, y suelen olvidar o normalizar las
historias que no la respetan.
-Estos nuevos enfoques no destronaron a los abordajes abajo-arriba, pero los investigadores
comenzaron a apreciar que los sujetos no van a ejecutar las tareas como papeles en blanco.
Por lo tanto, surge un enfoque alternativo que se centra en cmo el organismo, con
estructuras ya preparadas para la estimulacin, manipula y reordena la informacin que
encuentra.
-Estos nuevos enfoques son ecolgicos, y arriba-abajo, y llegaron incluso a influir en los
estudios ms conservadores sobre la memoria (por ejemplo, Bower, Craik, Lockhart).
-Hay un avance con esta nueva perspectiva, porque no se limita a reconocer la existencia de
procesos arriba-abajo, sino que describe sus detalles.
Sntesis y enfoques generales
-Los modelos clsicos de procesamiento de informacin eran ciegos con respecto al
contenido: se asuma que cualquier tipo de informacin era procesada de la misma manera.
No obstante, estos supuestos fueron cuestionados. Shepard y Metzler intentaron mostrar
que en una tarea los sujetos comparan figuras geomtricas para determinar si son iguales
rotndolas mentalmente, lo cual parece mostrar que no se las representa de manera
proposicional, sino como imgenes (Kosslyn). Del hecho de que las computadoras
transmiten informacin en un nico simbolismo no se sigue que los humanos tambin se
restrinjan a uno.
-Uno de los problemas que enfrenta la psicologa cognitiva es la particin del campo en
muchas especialidades y subespecialidades. John Anderson propuso un intento ambicioso
de unificacin, un modelo general de la arquitectura de la cognicin llamado ACT (o
CAP: Control adaptativo del pensamiento). Su nocin central es la de sistema de
produccin: cuando un nodo de la red es lo suficientemente activado, surge una accin o
produccin. El sistema incluye varias formas de memoria (memoria de trabajo, memoria

declarativa, memoria de produccin). Hay otros mecanismos: procesos de codificacin,

procesos de ejecucin, procesos de almacenamiento, procesos de recuperacin, etc.
-Algunos psiclogos defienden modelos como el de Anderson, mientras otros lo rechazan.
Para algunos, ACT no es un sistema predictivo, sino un marco muy general que impone
pocas limitaciones detalladas a la naturaleza del sistema cognitivo. Y los ms escpticos
sostienen que la bsqueda de una teora tan general es una prdida innecesaria de energa.
-Aqu defendemos que es demasiado prematuro para abandonar los esfuerzos de describir
un sistema cognitivo general. Incluso si quienes se atreven a hacer este tipo de cosas se
equivocan, se puede aprender de sus errores. Por otra parte, el trabajo de Anderson parece
estar basado ms en la lectura de otros psiclogos que en la inmersin en los fenmenos
reales del pensamiento, la memoria, etc. Hasta este punto, parece que ACT es ms bien
internamente coherente que conectado externamente con los procesos reales del
pensamiento humano.
-Algunos investigadores, especialmente Jerry Fodor, han sugerido que la mente debe ser
vista como constituida por dispositivos de procesamiento de informacin en gran medida
separados, como compuesta de dispositivos diferentes para cada tipo especfico de
contenido. Este modularismo sostiene que los mdulos han evolucionado para desarrollar
formas especficas de anlisis de manera rpida y encapsulada, que la comunicacin entre
mdulos ocurre slo subsecuentemente, y que incluso si hay un procesador central o una
funcin ejecutiva, difcilmente se pueda dar cuenta de ella. Esta concepcin se opone a las
teoras ciegas al contenido o a las que creen en facultades horizontales, como la de
Anderson, segn las cuales todas las facultades trabajan de la misma manera para cualquier
tipo de contenido. Una consecuencia del modularismo podra ser que la psicologa puede
dejar de pretender ser una disciplina unificada, por lo cual es bueno que se prosiga con el
trabajo en explicaciones sintticas como las de Anderson.
-Hay algunos crticos de la psicologa cognitiva que deploran la artificialidad de sus
investigaciones, argumentando que los modelos ms convincentes se basan en actividades
que tienen poco que ver con las prcticas ordinarias de los humanos. Como seala Neisser,
la insistencia en el modelo computacional y en los escenarios artificiales de laboratorio
conduce a una carencia de una psicologa ecolgicamente vlida que de cuenta de los tipos
de cuestiones que los humanos encuentran y resuelven en la vida cotidiana. Entre quienes
defienden modelos ms ecolgicos se cuentan Gibson, Rosch, los Bahrick y Wittlinger.

6. Inteligencia artificial: la herramienta experta

Las ideas de inteligencia artificial
-Acuerdos. Casi todos acuerdan en que la inteligencia artificial busca producir, en una
computadora, un patrn de output que sera considerado inteligente si fuera exhibido por
seres humanos.
-Desacuerdos.
Algunos puntualizan el diseo de programas, otros los lenguajes de programacin, otros
incluyen el hardware mecnico y el componente conceptual humano adems del software.

Algunos quieren simular exactamente los procesos de pensamiento humano, mientras que
otros se contentan con cualquier programa que conduzca a consecuencias inteligentes.
Algunos tienen una visin dbil de la metfora del pensamiento, para la cual el diseo de
programas inteligentes es slo un medio de probar teoras sobre cmo los humanos
podran llevar a cabo operaciones cognitivas, mientras que otros tienen una visin fuerte,
para la cual una computadora programada apropiadamente es en realidad una mente, en el
sentido en que se puede decir literalmente que entienden y tienen otros estados cognitivos.
Hay una tensin entre generalistas y expertos, que refleja la discusin entre
perspectivas modularistas y de procesamiento central en la psicologa: para los generalistas
hay programas o familias de programas que pueden ser aplicados a cualquier tipo de
problema; para los expertos los programas deben contener un conocimiento ms detallado
acerca de un dominio especfico y restringirse a ese dominio.
Para algunos la inteligencia artificial tiene importancia cientfica (muchos sostienen que
reemplaza a la epistemologa); para otros no es una ciencia, sino una forma de ingeniera
aplicada sin el basamento terico de una disciplina cientfica.
Antecedentes histricos
-En 1938 Shannon mostr que los circuitos que podan ser encontrados en una mquina
electrnica podran ser expresados en trminos de una ecuacin booleana: el sistema
verdadero-falso era paralelo a los interruptores encendido-apagado, o a los estados abiertos
y cerrados de un circuito. Cualquier operacin que pueda ser descrita en un conjunto finito
de pasos puede ser llevada a cabo por estos circuitos.
-En 1936 Turing propuso su idea de que una tarea computacional explcitamente enunciada
podra ser ejecutada por una mquina que poseyera un conjunto finito apropiado de
instrucciones. Comenz a pensar en la relacin entre el pensamiento humano y el
pensamiento artificial, lo que deriv en el famoso test de Turing.
-Bush comenz a construir mquinas capaces de resolver ecuaciones diferenciales.
-Hacia 1943 McCulloch y Pitts desarrollaron sus ideas sobre redes neurales; especialmente
la idea de que todo lo que pueda ser expresado exhaustivamente y sin ambigedad puede
ser realizado por una red finita apropiada de neuronas. El cerebro poda ser visto como una
mquina de una forma ms precisa que antes, y ser pensado como una mquina de Turing.
-Wiener estaba aunando las corrientes de la ciberntica, un nuevo campo interdisciplinar
que investigaba los mecanismos de retroalimentacin en materia orgnica y en autmatas.
-A von Neumann suele atribursele la idea de un programa almacenado, donde las
operaciones de la computadora pueden ser controladas por medio de un programa o
conjunto de instrucciones, almacenado en la memoria interna de la computadora, siendo por
tanto innecesario reprogramar la computadora para cada nueva tarea. Tambin explor las
analogas y las diferencias entre las computadoras y el cerebro.
El verano de 1956 en Dartmouth
-En el verano de 1956 un grupo de jvenes matemticos y lgicos se encontraron en
Dartmouth College con la conjetura de que cualquier aspecto de la inteligencia en principio
puede ser describible tan precisamente que una mquina podra simularlo. Se expusieron
las capacidades de las computadoras para llevar a cabo las siguientes tareas cognitivas:
jugar al ajedrez (Alex Bernstein), jugar a las damas (Arthur Samuel), probar teoremas
lgicos (Newell y Simon), modelar redes neurales (Nathan Rochester), y probar teoremas
euclidianos (Minsky).

-Los propsitos de la reunin no fueron satisfechos, pero las ideas propuestas por la
generacin anterior (Wiener, von Neumann, McCulloch, Turing) podan ahora ser llevadas
a cabo mediante el diseo de mquinas y la escritura de programas acerca de los cuales la
anterior generacin slo haba especulado.
Programas para problemas: Allen Newell y Herbert Simon
A. Logic Theorist
-Su primer programa, Logic Theorist (LT), poda probar teoremas de los Principia de
Russell y Whitehead.
-Para desarrollarlo se enfrentaron a la dificultad de escribir programas directamente en el
lenguaje de las computadoras: necesitaban un lenguaje de nivel superior, ms simple para el
programador humano, que pudiera ser traducido automticamente al lenguaje de la
computadora. Por ello disearon lenguajes de procesamiento de informacin (LPI), o
lenguajes de procesamiento de listas.
-El procesamiento de lista fue una tcnica que resolvi el problema de la distribucin del
almacenaje en una memoria limitada de computadora, y permiti que los programadores
crearan estructuras de datos para almacenar la informacin de una forma accesible similares
a los procesos de pensamiento humano.
-El programa contiene las reglas bsicas de operacin: una lista de axiomas y teoremas
previamente demostrados. Luego, el programa recibe una nueva expresin lgica y se le
instruye que descubra una prueba. El programa trata todas las operaciones que puede para
encontrar una prueba. Si encuentra una, la prueba es impresa en una larga tira de papel, si
no la encuentra, el programa declara que no puede resolver el problema y detiene sus
operaciones.
B. General Problem Solver
-El proyecto ms ambicioso de Newell y Simon fue el de desarrollar un solucionador
general de problemas (SGP), un programa cuyos mtodos en principio podran ser utilizado
para resolver todo tipo de problemas.
-El proyecto no pretenda disear un programa que simplemente resolviera problemas, sino
que lo hiciera imitando los procesos seguidos por humanos normales al resolverlos. Para
ello recolectaron protocolos que registraran las introspecciones y anotaciones de los sujetos
que se involucraban en la resolucin de problemas.
-En un anlisis de medios-fines, uno primero establece la forma deseada de resolver el
problema, y luego compara el lugar actual en el proceso de solucin con el objetivo final
deseado. Si esas dos instancias coinciden, el problema ha sido resuelto. Si no coinciden, el
solucionador clarifica la diferencia y busca mtodos para reducirla. Hay una tabla que
asocia los fines del sistema con operadores que pueden ser de utilidad para lograrlos. Al
computar la diferencia entre el estado actual y el fin, el sistema selecciona un operador
asociado con esa diferencia y prueba si el operador es aplicable a la situacin actual. Si es
aplicable, y produce un resultado ms cercano al estado deseado, se lo repite. Si es
inaplicable, el sistema genera una sub-meta, que se propone reducir la diferencia entre la
situacin actual y la situacin en la que el operador puede ser aplicado. Este proceso se
repite hasta que la meta es lograda, o hasta que se demuestre que no puede ser lograda con
la informacin dada, o con los operadores disponibles para el programa.
-El proyecto del SGP fue abandonado, porque su generalidad no era tan amplia como sus
creadores haban pretendido, y porque el campo de la IA continu por otras direcciones. No

obstante, el proyecto puede ser considerado como el primero en simular un espectro de la

conducta simblica humana. Adems, ocup un rol importante en la concepcin de Simon y
Newell de la empresa de la IA, segn la cual toda inteligencia involucra la manipulacin de
sistemas simblicos, manipulacin que ahora poda ser desarrollada tambin por mquinas.
C. Visin de la inteligencia artificial
-El concepto de sistema fsico de smbolos fue considerado por Newell y Simon como la
doctrina central de la ciencia de la computacin. El trabajo del terico es el de identificar el
conjunto de procesos que opera sobre expresiones simblicas para producir otras
expresiones que crean, modifican, reproducen, o transforman estructuras simblicas.
-Una nocin clave es la de sistema de produccin, en el que una operacin ser llevada a
cabo si una condicin especfica es satisfecha. Los programas consisten en secuencias
largas de sistemas de produccin que operan en la base de datos. Ese sistema es una especie
de enlace estmulo-respuesta computacional: mientras los estmulos (condiciones) sean
apropiados, la respuesta (produccin) ser ejecutada.
-Lo que demostraron Newell y Simon fue: (i) que las computadoras podan desarrollar
conductas que si fueran exhibidas por humanos seran consideradas inteligentes, y (ii) que
los pasos seguidos por sus programas tienen un parecido no-trivial con los pasos que se
observan en la resolucin de problemas humana.
-Tanto la mente humana como la computadora resuelven problemas de formas similares,
sin importar las diferencias de hardware: son sistemas que procesan informacin a lo largo
del tiempo siguiendo un orden ms o menos lgico. Habiendo registrado los
procedimientos realizados por sujetos humanos involucrados en las mismas tareas, el
equipo logr encontrar muchas analogas. Newell y Simon no defendan un isomorfismo a
nivel estructural entre el hardware y el cerebro, sino a nivel de la teora del procesamiento
de informacin. Este enfoque dur unos veinticinco aos, y slo recientemente se comenz
a prestar atencin a lo que se sabe sobre el sistema nervioso dentro de la comunidad de la
inteligencia artificial.
D. Crticas
-La informacin usada por un programa es colocada en l por humanos, por lo que el
solucionador de problemas slo haca aquello para lo que fue programado. A esto Newell y
Simon respondieron que en la medida en que el programa no realizaba una repeticin
mecnica de pasos, sino que usaban reglas para resolver problemas a los cuales no haba
sido expuesto antes, la conducta era tan inteligente como la de un humano: los humanos
tambin han de ser pensados como programados con reglas.
-Los seres humanos pueden improvisar atajos o heursticas, mientras que las computadoras
repetirn el mismo proceso, a menos que puedan ser programadas para aprender de
esfuerzos anteriores. Conscientes de esta limitacin, Newell y Simon se propusieron
disear programas capaces de aprender.
-El SGP slo se propona resolver desafos lgicos, que se prestan a la expresin mediante
formas simblicas sobre las que se puede operar. Por lo tanto, el SGP slo poda resolver
problemas lgico-matemticos. No obstante, muchos problemas resueltos por humanos no
son fcilmente expresables por medio de lgica simblica.
Marvin Minsky y sus estudiantes

-Minsky no contribuy muy activamente a la literatura sobre IA, ni se asocia una lnea de
trabajo a l, pero form a un grupo activo de estudiantes.
-T. G. Evans desarroll un programa a fines de los 60s que resolva analogas de tipo
visual. Si se le mostraban dos figuras F y G que mantenan una relacin de analoga A, el
programa era capaz de seleccionar de un grupo de figuras otro par, F y G, que tambin
mantenan la relacin A. El programa describe a F y G como figuras, y caracteriza la
diferencia entre las descripciones (en trminos como dentro, sobre, etc.); luego aplica
la diferencia identificada como una regla de transformacin a F, para llegar a un patrn
que tenga la misma descripcin que uno de los patrones candidatos (G).
-Daniel Bobrow dise STUDENT, capaz de resolver el tipo de problemas de lgebra que
podan encontrarse en libros de matemticas de secundaria. El programa asuma que cada
oracin del problema era una ecuacin. Se le daba conocimiento acerca de ciertas palabras
para ayudarle a localizar la ecuacin, analizando la sintaxis de las oraciones por medio de
esos significados conocidos. STUDENT exhibe a la vez los poderes y las limitaciones de
los programas de esa poca: los programadores podan disear mquinas capaces de actuar
inteligentemente, pero los procedimientos que stas usaban eran muy diferentes a los
empleados por humanos ordinarios. Mientras las computadoras podan desconocer el
dominio de aplicacin de las ecuaciones matemticas (su conocimiento es puramente
sintctico), los humanos en general se valdran de sus conocimientos de ese dominio para
resolver el problema.
Listas y lgica: John McCarthy
-Uno de sus mayores logros de McCarthy fue el diseo de LISP (list processing), el
lenguaje de computacin que se volvi el ms usado en el campo de la IA. LISP se
preocupa por la presentacin y manipulacin de listas, de tems de listas, y de listas de
listas. El poder de LISP se deriva de que es un lenguaje recursivo, capaz de describir y
manipular estructuras y conjuntos de estructuras.
-McCarthy tambin tuvo ideas fuertes sobre los fines de la IA y los modos de lograrlos.
Para l, el modo de hacer mquinas inteligentes es usando un enfoque formal riguroso en el
que los actos que producen inteligencia sean reducidos a un conjunto de relaciones lgicas
o axiomas que puedan ser expresados precisamente en trminos matemticos. El sistema de
McCarthy se basaba en la fe en la consistencia de un sistema de creencias y en el punto de
vista de que todo conocimiento puede ser pensado en trminos puramente lgicos. Si este
enfoque fuese adoptado, sera posible usar tcnicas de demostracin de teoremas que no
sean dependientes de los detalles de los dominios particulares. McCarthy era un defensor de
estos puntos de vista extremadamente generales. McCarthy trabaj en el diseo de una
modificacin no-convencional de la lgica estndar para modelar el razonamiento de
sentido comn, y su colega Hayes trat de formular en trminos lgicos los procesos de
pensamiento de la fsica de sentido comn.
Otros hitos en la programacin
-Feigenbaum dise DENDRAL, capaz de determinar, a partir de la enorme cantidad de
datos de los espectrgrafos, qu compuesto orgnico estaba siendo analizado. El programa
formulaba hiptesis sobre la estructura molecular del compuesto, y luego testeaba esas
hiptesis mediante posteriores predicciones. El output definitivo era una lista de posibles
compuestos moleculares listados en trminos de plausibilidad decreciente. Sus resultados se
compararon favorablemente con los de qumicos expertos. A diferencia de programas

anteriores, usaba mucho conocimiento almacenado sobre qumica, y no emulaba los modos
en que seres humanos resolveran el problema.
-Por otra parte Colby y Weizenbaum desarrollaron programas capaces de dialogar. Ambos
programas podran, durante un tiempo, engaar a una persona. No obstante, alguien que
conociera el diseo del programa, o que pudiera inferir que se trata de una mquina, podra
desenmascararlo. Esto se debe a que, como en el caso de STUDENT, los programas no
entienden las palabras usadas, sino que estn diseados para responder de un cierto modo a
ciertas palabras.
El fenomenal SHRDLU
-Terry Winograd desarroll un programa llamado SHRDLU, un experto que realmente
entiende el lenguaje, aunque trabaja en un dominio muy limitado.
-Winograd dise para su programa un mundo de bloques simples que podan ser apilados
y dispuestos de varias formas. Su programa era lo suficientemente sofisticado en su
conocimiento lingstico como para llevar a cabo un conjunto complejo de instrucciones.
Adems, SHRDLU da muestras de que esas instrucciones son de hecho entendidas (una de
esas muestras es que el programa pide clarificacin cuando las instrucciones son
ambiguas).
-El mundo simulado era pequeo, y el nmero de acciones que poda llevar a cabo y el
nmero de preguntas que poda responder era muy limitado. No obstante, dentro de su
universo particular, el programa se comportaba de un modo plausible, percibiendo
distinciones y llevando a cabo rdenes, sugiriendo que entenda lo que se le deca.
-SHRDLU era ms sofisticado que sus predecesores porque usaba una serie de especialistas
lingsticos. Tambin posea sistemas de creencias, conocimiento sobre resolucin de
problemas, y especialistas que detectan si una proferencia es una pregunta, una orden o un
comentario.
-De acuerdo con Dennett, una de las mayores contribuciones de SHRDLU es su
exploracin de las demandas impuestas sobre cualquier sistema que sigue instrucciones,
planea cambios en el mundo, y mantiene un registro de ellos, a pesar de que no sea
exactamente anlogo a un humano.
-SHRDLU tambin tena limitaciones. No dispona de informacin semntica para
distinguir entre los significados de palabras como y, el y pero. Adems, no puede
aprender a ejecutar mejor sus tareas. Un programa posterior similar, llamado HACKER,
diseado por Sussman, mostr que era posible que ocurriera ese aprendizaje.
Cuestiones cruciales
-Necesidad de sistemas expertos: mientras Newell y Simon lideraron la bsqueda de
programas que pudieran tratar con cualquier tipo de problemas, hacia fines de los 60s las
limitaciones de esos programas generales comenzaron a ser ms evidentes. Feigenbaum
sostuvo que sus maestros estaban trabajando con problemas de juguete, no con problemas
del mundo real. El desarrollo de SHRLDU fue lo que termin de evidenciar las limitaciones
del programa generalista, y la necesidad de sistemas que poseyeran una gran cantidad de
conocimiento especializado.
-Representacin procedimental versus representacin declarativa: algunos favorecan una
representacin declarativa (conocimiento codificado como un conjunto de hechos o
declaraciones almacenados) y otros una representacin procedimental (conocimiento
codificado como un conjunto de acciones o procedimientos a ser llevados a cabo). Los

defensores de LISP (representacin declarativa) sostenan que los lenguajes declarativos

eran ms fciles de entender y usar, y conducan a programas ms econmicos. Los
procedimentalistas sostienen que la inteligencia humana debe ser pensada como un
conjunto de actividades que los individuos saben cmo hacer, encarnndose cualquier
conocimiento en los procedimientos para lograr resultados. Actualmente se reconoce la
necesidad de combinar ambos modos de representacin.
-Tres ataques a la IA: Weizenbaum sostuvo que las afirmaciones de los tericos de la IA
eran demasiado excesivas, sin consonancia con los limitados logros que haban obtenido, y
que se estaban confundiendo peligrosamente el mbito de lo humano con el de las
mquinas: hay experiencias nicamente humanas, como el amor y la moral. Dreyfus
sostuvo que hay diferencias fundamentales entre los seres humanos y las computadoras que
no pueden ser reducidas por la IA, porque los seres humanos tienen conciencia, tolerancia
para la ambigedad, un cuerpo que organiza y unifica la experiencia de objetos y de
impresiones subjetivas, potencial para el aburrimiento, la fatiga y la falta de determinacin,
propsitos y necesidades claros que organizan su situacin, y formas de inteligencia que no
pueden ser descritas por reglas lgicas. Lighthill, un evaluador de la IA del gobierno
britnico, encontr relativamente poco que admirar y desaprob la distancia entre las
expectativas iniciales y los logros reales en los primeros veinte aos de la IA (slo guard
elogios para SHRDLU, defendiendo la tesis de Winograd de que la IA puede tener xito en
dominios limitados).
Innovaciones en los 70s
-A pesar de las crticas, los xitos de la IA se renovaron. Haba programas que eran capaces
de percibir de manera holstica; de usar el lenguaje creativamente; de traducir de un
lenguaje a otro usando una representacin semntica lingsticamente neutra; de planear
acciones de manera general e imprecisa, decidiendo los detalles en la ejecucin; de
distinguir entre diferentes tipos de reaccin emocional de acuerdo con el contexto
psicolgico del sujeto, etc. A pesar de que el optimismo de los 50s no sera satisfecho, los
logros del campo fueron notables.
-El eptome de la segunda oleada de energas y logros a comienzos de los 70s fue
SHRDLU, habiendo un giro de los sistemas generalistas a los sistemas expertos, y una
fusin de enfoques declarativos y procedimentales.
-Por la misma poca se desarroll una lnea importante y controvertida: el uso de enfoques
arriba-abajo para entender el lenguaje y otros dominios cognitivos. Schank sostuvo que un
mecanismo capaz de entender un texto tiene expectativas acerca de cmo es un texto en
general, y contiene un conjunto de conocimientos sobre los detalles del tema en cuestin.
Esos libretos preestablecidos permiten tratar con textos de otro modo difciles de
entender. Minsky propuso la nocin de marco: una estructura de conocimiento acerca de un
dominio. En un marco se crea y se mantiene una descripcin sustituyendo valores
observados en lugar de valores predichos. Se supone que los individuos poseen cientos de
marcos, y que combinaciones de ellos pueden ser invocadas en cualquier situacin
razonablemente compleja.
Pluralismos
-Para Minsky no hay un procesador general o central simple por el que pasa toda la
informacin. En cambio, hay muchos agentes que pueden comunicarse entre s, siendo cada
uno un especialista de algn tipo, y que pueden manejar diferentes tipos de conocimiento

simultneamente. Este enfoque no es una teora susceptible de un testeo claro, sino un

marco que conduce al diseo de programas que acten ms efectivamente y que modelen la
actividad humana ms fielmente.
-Minsky, Hinton y Anderson sugirieron que as como el cerebro es un mecanismo paralelo,
no seriado, la simulacin de la cognicin humana deba ser llevada a cabo por
computadoras que operaran de forma paralela. As como el cerebro aprende, ejecuta
muchas actividades con propsitos especiales, y tiene informacin dispersa por grandes
circuitos reverberantes, los programas deben incluir muchos agentes individuales
cooperando. Muchos anticipan que las arquitecturas paralelas sern una innovacin de la
IA.
Comprensin del lenguaje
-Schank y personas asociadas a l lograron producir programas capaces de dar resmenes
de historias, de hacer lecturas rpidas de artculos periodsticos, y de responder preguntas y
realizar inferencias sobre la trama, los personajes y la motivacin en una historia. Schank
sostuvo que todo el lenguaje se reduce a un grupo bsico de elementos conceptuales, e
incluso propuso cules eran esos elementos y cmo funcionaban. Con esos elementos
bsicos uno podra construir un entendimiento general del lenguaje, centrado slo en la
semntica, excluyendo factores sintcticos. Se le critica la carencia de principios de su
sistema semntico.
-Hay otras lneas de investigacin. Woods y Quillian siguen el camino de la semntica.
Marcus prefiere el de la sintaxis. Reddy desarroll un programa que aborda el
entendimiento del lenguaje desde distintos tipos de conocimiento (semntico, pragmtico,
sintctico, lxico, fonmico y fontico) y analiza la seal en una variedad de niveles desde
un segmento de sonido hasta la frase completa; cada fuente de conocimiento se fija en las
hiptesis generadas por las otras, y apuesta a la mejor alternativa sobre lo que se dijo.
Percepcin
-Rosenblatt desarroll hacia 1960 un mecanismo capaz de reconocer letras y otros patrones.
El mecanismo consista en una grilla de cuatrocientas fotoclulas conectadas azarosamente
con elementos asociadores que recolectaban los impulsos elctricos. Minsky y Papert
criticaron ese carcter azaroso, diciendo que era mejor encontrar previamente los principios
que haran funcionar bien a la mquina y luego disearla. Por un tiempo se sostuvo que no
se poda avanzar en el rea del reconocimiento de formas usando sistemas basados en el
modelo de las redes neurales.
-A comienzos de los 70s Winston desarroll un programa capaz de aprender a reconocer
configuraciones de bloques mediante la confrontacin con ejemplos y contraejemplos de
cada configuracin.
-Waltz desarroll un programa capaz de analizar una escena grfica entera, de desarrollar
una descripcin tridimensional de los objetos de una escena dibujada, y de reconocer que
dos dibujos diferentes son representaciones de la misma escena.
-Marr se propuso modelar las fases tempranas de la percepcin de objetos y escenas
siguiendo un enfoque chomskiano.
The Chinese Room
-Searle believes that understanding is a property that comes from a machine like the human
brain which is capable of certain processes, such as having and realizing intentions. Searle

seems to believe that, to do cognitive studies, one needs only two levels of explanation: the
level of intentionality (a plain English discussion of the organism's wishes, beliefs, and so
on) and a neurophysiological explanation of what the brain does in realizing these
intentional states. He finds no need for a level of symbolic representation, which dominates
work throughout the cognitive sciences: there is no representational level in which
computers and humans are similar. However, Searle's positive assertions about
intentionality have little force.
Critics and Defenders: The Debate Continues
-Weizenbaum raises ethical questions about whether A.I. should be allowed to impinge on
territory that has hitherto been restricted to human beings.
-Another line of criticism suggests that efforts to simulate human intelligence are perfectly
valid, but that most of the A.I. community has heretofore used superficial models which do
not approach the core of human thought processes. Scientists ought to be spending their
time analyzing competent human beings themselves, and then to program computers to
carry out intelligent operations.
-The practice of A.I. entails deep philosophical issues which cannot be ignored or
minimized.
-There are limits to what can be explained by current A.I. methods, and even whole areas of
study may lie outside of artificial intelligence, at least now and perhaps permanently.
-There are increasingly close ties being forged between experimental cognitive psychology
and artificial intelligence. Psychologists can benefit from the careful simulations made by
A.I. researchers, and can put their own typically informal models to rigorous tests; A.I.
scientists can determine whether their hypothesized models of human behavior are actually
realized by the subjects about whom they have been speculating.
-Parts of psychology and parts of computer science will simply merge into a single
discipline, or they will form the central core of a newly forged cognitive science. There
may well be areas of computer science, as well as of psychology, that do not take part in
this merger. Nonetheless, the issue of the actual degree of similarity between humans and
computers cannot be permanently ignored.

7. Lingstica: la bsqueda de la autonoma

El modelo original
Un nuevo concepto de gramtica
-Chomsky proceeded by proving that the theoretically most plausible method for generating
sentences could not in principle work. He criticized finite-state grammars, according to
which the speaker starts in a unique initial state and passes into a second state by producing
the first word of a sentence, proceeding from state to state until it has reached the final
state, at which time a complete sentence has been generated. These are inherently incapable
of representing the recursive properties of English constructions. He also criticized phrasestructure grammars, according to which there is an initial set of strings, together with a
finite set of phrase-structure or "rewrite rules," where one phrase can be rewritten in
another permissible form.

-Chomskys transformational grammar posits a set of rules whereby sentences can be

related to one another, and where one sentence (or more precisely, the abstract
representation of a sentence) can be converted or transformed into another. A generative
grammar is a rule system formalized with mathematical precision. Beginning with phrasestructure rules, one generates only kernel sentences, which are short active declarative
assertions, following a set of instructions for constructing strings. All the other grammatical
sentences of the language can be generated by means of transforming these kernel
sentences. Transformations are an algorithmic set of procedures that occur in a prescribed
order and allow one to convert one linguistic string to another.
-All these transformations are structure-dependent: they do not operate on single words or
on strings of words of arbitrary length, but they are imposed on strings (abstract
representations of sentences) after these strings have been analyzed into appropriate
syntactic categories and constituents (or phrase structures), which determine when and
where the transformations can be applied.
-Chomsky approached this task with a seriousness of purpose, an arsenal of logical and
mathematical tools, a finesse and a finality of argument that had simply not been marshaled
hitherto in linguistic analysis.
-His view of grammatical generation was based on the notion of an automaton a machine
in an abstract sense which simply generates linguistic strings on the basis of rules that have
been built (programmed) into it. The resulting grammar is neutral -equally valid as a
description of linguistic production or linguistic comprehension.
La revolucin metodolgica de Chomsky
-Chomsky laid out the formal criteria for an adequate theory of linguistics suggesting (and
demonstrating) how these criteria might be achieved. He expounded as well an ordered set
of standards of adequacy: observational adequacy, where the grammar gives a correct
account of observed linguistic data; descriptive adequacy, where the account also captures
the native speaker's intrinsic competence, his own internalized knowledge; and explanatory
adequacy, where the analyst uncovers principles underlying optimal grammar for the
language.
-Chomsky tried to state the rules that allow individuals to make, or to generate, all the
correct sentences; to know that they are correct and what they mean; and to be able to pick
out those sentences that violate these rules and are hence ungrammatical. To do this, the
speaker must possess al some level a detailed set of rules or procedures indicating when
different parts of speech can occur in given places in an utterance. The rules must capture
the intuitions of native speakers about the relations obtaining within and among sentences.
-His more general conviction that the several domains of mind (such as language) operate
in terms of rules or principles that can be ferreted out and stated formally constitutes his
main challenge to contemporary cognitive science.
-Rather than trying to discern regularities from empirically observed utterances, Chomsky
insisted that it was necessary to work deductively. One must figure out what kind of a
system language is, and one must state one's conclusions in terms of a formal system. Once
the system has been set up, one should then examine particular utterances to determine
whether they can, in fact, be appropriately generated through adherence to the rules of the
linguistic system.

-Hence, Chomsky's theory is not a mere reorganization of the data into a new kind of
library catalogue, nor another speculative philosophy about the nature of Man and
Language, but rather a rigorous explication of our intuitions about our language in terms of
an overt axiom system, the theorems derivable from it, explicit results which may be
compared with new data and other intuitions, all based plainly on an overt theory of the
internal structure of languages.
-One of Chomskys assumptions was that the syntax of language could be examined
independently of other aspects of language. He even conceived syntax as the core of
language, as the capacity unique to the human species to combine and recombine verbal
symbols in certain specifiable orders, in order to create a potentially infinite number of
grammatically acceptable sentences. Syntax is the primary, basic, or deep level of the
language, with both semantics (meaning) and phonology (sound structure) being
constructed upon a syntactic core. Chomsky also considered language to be an abstraction,
a capacity that can merely be glimpsed in impure form in an individual's actual output.
-Another assumption was that the discipline of linguistics could proceed independently of
other areas of the cognitive sciences. He challenged the widespread belief in general
powers of the mind, coming to think of the mind as a series of relatively independent
mental organs or modules which follow their own rules. Language is an autonomous organ,
so linguistics is an autonomous discipline. Superimposed on this modularity was a
commitment to mentalism, to the existence of abstract structures in the mind which make
knowledge possible. There was as well a swing to nativism, the belief that much of our
knowledge is universal and inborn: the individual is born with a strong penchant to learn
language, and the possible forms of the language which one can learn are sharply limited by
one's species membership with its peculiar genetic inheritance (an evidence for this is that
despite the difficult task faced by children who learn language, language is learned rapidly
and with lack of explicit tutelage and enough stimuli).
-These working assumptions about linguistic autonomy worked out propitiously and made
linguistics a rapidly developing area of science. But whether these assumptions can
ultimately be sustained constitutes a problem that has yet to be resolved.
-Chomsky criticized behaviorism, which attempted to explain linguistic behavior in terms
of the same stimulus-response chains and laws of reinforcement, ignoring the intricate
structural properties of language, because it ignores the creative aspect of language.
Cambios posteriores
-In the Standard Theory, there are no longer initial kernel sentences. Instead, one now
starts with the base grammar, which generates an initial phrase marker, the deep structure,
major operations being performed upon this deep structure. There is a transformational
component which converts the initial deep structure into other structures, the final of which
is the surface structure. Deep-structure relations are interpreted by a semantic component:
thus, the information necessary for semantic analysis must be represented in the deep
structure. Phonological interpretation occurs on the surface structure string.
-The Standard Theory was a more ambitious theory, attempting in part to accomplish for
semantics what had been modeled for syntax alone in Syntactic Structures. It also proved

far more controversial and, because of various insufficiencies, eventually had to be

abandoned. Particularly controversial was the notion of deep structure. The move of
making semantics an interpretation of core syntactic arrangements was also widely debated.
-The conservative branch of linguistics argued that only humanly invented systems like
logic have the regularity Chomsky sought in language. They also rejected the separability
of grammar and semantics and the separation of both from the rest of culture.
-Some members of the younger generation who felt that Chomsky was not sufficiently
radical. They questioned the simple positing of two levels of analysis. They also called into
doubt the autonomy of syntax from semantics. Ultimately, these critics abandoned simple
deep structure in favor of grammars whose underlying structures were much deeper and
closer to semantic representation themselves. These generative semanticists set up rules that
take semantic representations as their input and yield surface structures as their output, with
no intervening level of deep structure.
-The problems pointed out by the generative semanticists have stimulated Chomsky to
develop certain notational forms (using symbolic logic) and new and highly abstract
mechanisms. Even the transformational component has been entirely eliminated on some
accounts or radically simplified on others.
-Viewing language as a more abstract notion than grammar, more remote from actual
mechanisms, Chomsky became more convinced that linguists should concentrate on
solving the issues of syntax. There are no more attempts to systematize semantics.
-Chomsky has tried to reduce the class of transformations by discovering general conditions
that rules must meet. The transformational rules, at least for a substantial core grammar, can
be reduced to the single rule "Move alpha" (that is, "move any category anywhere"). As
transformational rules and phrase-structure rules become less prominent, more attention is
being paid to the lexicon to the particular rules governing specific words, which now
contains much of the information that used to be part of the transformational apparatus.
And the notion of surface structure becomes much richer, yielding a "one level theory".
-Chomsky describes his pursuit in theoretical terms as a search for universal grammar,
which is genetically determined at its initial state and is specified, sharpened, articulated,
and refined under conditions set by experience, to yield the particular grammars found in
specific groups of individuals. To know a language is to be in a certain state of mind/brain:
this state is described by a core grammar which consists of certain principles of universal
grammar, which are to be discovered by linguists. Thus, Chomsky takes a purely realistic
stance: language knowledge is a series of states in the brain.
-Until fairly recently, his goal had been to describe the various rules that individuals must
somehow know if they are to know a language. But now he has come to the conclusion that
it is more productive to speak of various principles that govern language use, which begin
in human biology. The principles of the universal grammar are various subsystems, each of
which features a limited degree of parametric variation. If the universal grammar is
sufficiently rich, then even limited linguistic data in the environment should suffice for
developing rich and complex linguistic systems in the mind.
-We see here the union of two visions in the science of the mind: the platonic vision that
features language as a kind of idealized object, governed by a small set of universal
principles, having relatively few parameters; ant the vision of language as an organic

system, or module, which has the potential to develop in a small and delimited range of
ways.
-Despite undeniable shifts in emphasis and strategy, the centrality of syntax, the belief in a
transformational component, and the view of semantics as an interpretation of basic
syntactic relations have endured.
Reactions in Other Cognitive Sciences
-George Miller became a convert to Chomskian linguistics and helped to turn the
psychology of language into a testing ground for Chomsky's transformational claims, trying
to demonstrate the "psychological reality of transformations. This effort was not
particularly successful, but important methods of psycholinguistic research were worked
out in the process.
-Chomskys ideas and definitions clash with established truth in psychology, finding
suspicion about his formal methods, opposition to his ideas about language as a separate
realm, and outright skepticism with respect to his belief in innate ideas. His particular
notions and biases have thus far had only modest impact in mainstream psychology.
-Chomsky had enormous influence in the psychology of language, or psycholinguistics. In
the study of syntactic capacities, models for analysis were generally supplied by Chomsky.
At times these models have been used as a means of characterizing the data collected; at
other times, the data have been used to test the "psychological reality" of models. However,
when Chomskys models were applied, the results have not been consistent with those
models, at least in any straightforward way. Sometimes he has discounted empirical
research in psycholinguistics, with the disclaimer that their theories have to do with
idealized competence, and not with the facts of individual performance.
-Jerrold Katz and Jerry Fodor introduced Chomskys model to philosophy. They developed
a model of semantics which became incorporated into the "standard version" of
transformational grammar. Philosophers have reacted coolly to Chomsky's promotion of
seemingly discredited rationalist notions and to his enthusiasm for innate ideas. His ready
use of terms like rules, structures, systems, with (apparent) disregard for the nontrivial
technical problems involved in such concepts, and his facile reinterpretation of leading
philosophical figures of the past have proven difficult for most philosophers to swallow.
Also Chomsky's lack of interest in semantics has troubled many philosophers, who find in
the work of semanticist Richard Montague some of the same formal elegance others have
admired in Chomsky's syntactic discussions.
-Several of Chomsky's main ideas are not readily implemented in computational formats.
For example, there is no guarantee in principle that one can parse sentences using
transformational grammatical approaches. Moreover, A.I. is very much oriented toward
practical problems of designing programs that understand sentences or stories, and
Chomsky's syntax-centered framework is not suited for the main issues of understanding
discourse. Accordingly, computer scientists like Roger Schank have been publicly hostile to
the theory, taking the position that semantics and pragmatics are central in language and
that syntax is relatively unimportant. Schank has also attacked the modular notion. For his
part, Chomsky has been rather critical of research in artificial intelligence, finding it mostly
unmotivated and ad hoc.

Rival Positions within Linguistics

-Bresnan has concentrated on developing a theory of language which is psychologically
real. In opposition to Chomsky, who pays little attention to how his derivations might be
realized by an individual speaker operating under "real-world" constraints, Bresnan and her
colleagues have fashioned a perspective designed to illuminate how an individual will
perceive or produce language. In her lexical-functional theory, there is no transformational
component. The information traditionally embedded in the syntactic components is now
placed in the individual's lexicon.
-Reverting to the generalized phrase-structure grammars that Chomsky strongly attacked in
his early publications, Gazdar argues that one does not need transformations, and that even
unusual surface structures can be stated in a straightforward way. In Gazdar's theory,
semantic interpretation is applied directly to the surface structure generated by a grammar.
There are explicit semantic rules for each syntactical rule.

8. Antropologa: ms all del caso individual

Lucien Lvy-Bruhl examina la mente de los primitivos
-When Lvy-Bruhl began his study of the thinking processes of primitive, it was assumed
that members of "advanced" Western civilization represented the height of reasoning, and
that "lesser individuals" around the world were simply inferior copies of the Western mind.
Lvy-Bruhl challenged this received opinion, holding that primitives do not reason badly,
but differently. The primitive mind follows a kind of logic, a "pre-logic," which is
fundamentally different from our own.
-Lvy-Bruhl proposed two major characteristics of primitive thought. First of all, such
thought partakes of the law of participation. Primitive individuals see objects, beings, and
other external phenomena as at once identical with themselves and also as something other
than themselves. Second, primitive individuals can emit and receive mystical forces,
properties, and qualities, which are felt as outside themselves, without their ceasing to be
what they are. Given these properties, the primitive mind does not abstain from
contradiction.
-Later, Lvy-Bruhl became dubious that primitives really do exhibit a different, pre-logical
form of thought. He virtually adopted the position he had originally opposed, and concurred
with those who see differences between primitive and civilized as a question of degree.
What has been described to us under the name of primitive mentality is undoubtedly a
permanent structure of the human mind but in our society this structure is blurred by the
supremacy of scientific thought whereas it remains in the foreground among preliterate
peoples.
The evolution of methods
-Early in this century, the sources of evidence were principally textual: one read the myths
or, less frequently, transcripts of conversations with preliterate individuals, and then drew
conclusions about the kinds of thought reflected in them.
-Increasingly in the twentieth century, anthropologically oriented scholars moved to "case
studies", an important step in an empirical direction. The problem with individual

fieldwork, however, was that it left a great deal of discretion in the hands of a single
investigator or a small cadre of fieldworkers.
-The need of more objective methods which could be employed by a single investigative
team gave rise in the 1960s to the field of ethnoscience.
-While it seemed for a while that the new empirical procedures might place anthropology
on a firmer scientific footing, there has recently been a disaffection with these methods.
There has been at least a partial return to the view that anthropology ought to re-embrace
the holistic methods of the in-depth case study, and perhaps align itself more with the
humanities and less with the sciences.
Edward Tylors empiricist anthropology
-Edward Tylor undertook in his book a rationalist assault on the divine inspiration of
religious beliefs. According to his revisionist perspective, human culture and religions were
products of a natural, law-governed evolution of human mental capacities.
-Tylor was declaring that human capacities are not simply part of one's birthright: they are
rather derived from one's membership in a group and presumably could be changed, if the
individuals were reared in a different group or if the group itself altered its practices or its
values.
-According to his own scheme, humanity could be arrayed along a linear track, ranging
from savagery, to barbarism, to civilization. He believed in psychic unity, however, and
held that all peoples were capable of making this progression. Further, even those
individuals at the height of civilization were not bereft of earlier traces. Conversely, Tylor
also held that even the most irrational customs are products of a reasoning capacity like our
own.
-Tylor also made important methodological contributions. Noteworthy was his statistical
method of adhesion, whereby he attempted to determine which customs or practices hang
together, by preparing massive lists of the practices carried out in various cultures, and
noting which tended to occur at the same time.
James Frazers speculative anthropology
-Frazer traced a connecting thread from the pagan ceremonies of the past to the practices of
Christianity and other modern religions. He described early forms of magic where one
could control another individual simply by gaining possession of some vestige of that
individual. These totemic practices anticipated the rise of religion where individuals gave
up the belief that they themselves could control events, and instead posited nonhuman
higher powers which govern the world. And finally, Frazer described the highest stage of
development, that of science, where man once again began to manipulate nature, but this
time sought to uncover and test the relevant physical laws. On this view, early men and
contemporary primitives were seen as relatively irrational, though perhaps possessing the
same potentials as modern man.
-The tradition that Frazer represented eventually yielded to a less grandiose, more empirical
approach. There was a large-scale expedition to the Torres Straits in the South Pacific. The
interest was kept in primitive mentality, but there was a shift in method, trying to take
systematic measurements of psychological characteristics in the field. Anthropologists did
not focus on "higher" cognitive functions, but they probed abilities to make discriminations
in various sensory modalities, to appreciate illusions, and to name colors. Nor were the
results particularly decisive with respect to the controversy about primitive mentality. There

were some provocative findings: for example, a hint that the language available to
individuals might influence the way in which they see or group colors; documentation of
the Papuan's keen powers of observation; a suggestion that the perception of spatial
relations may also be culturally conditioned; and the documentation of capacious memories
for family genealogies.
The American Version
-Faced with the conflicting claims of the physicist -who sought objective explanations of
color- and the explorer -who sought to capture the atmosphere of exotic cultures- Boas
strove to reconcile these perspectives. He concluded that validity must be granted both to
the scientific view of the outsider and to the subjective view of the particular individual or
culture. He brought this lesson to the larger arena of anthropology, where he undertook a
long-term study of Indian societies in the Pacific Northwest. In addition, he began to train
nearly all of the next generation of anthropologists.
-He avoided strong theoretical statements, preferring to adopt a more inductive approach.
-He opposed the notion of the linear evolution of culture. Boas felt that each culture was
best studied in terms of its own practices, needs, and pressures, rather than in relation to
some other culture which represented a more or less advanced mode of organization.
-Boas also emphasized the importance of language and of linguistics for all of
anthropological study. He developed methods for the careful notating of languages. He also
underlined the important role of language in all of human activity, though he expressed
skepticism that a culture could be restricted by the form of its particular language. He saw
thought as influencing language rather than vice versa.
-The difference between primitive peoples and ourselves is that whereas the categories used
by the primitive have developed in a crude and unreflective manner, contemporary literate
populations have been able to systematize knowledge, in the manner of the rational
scientist. This difference has emerged not because each individual in our society thinks in a
more logical manner but rather because various philosophically oriented materials have
become worked out more systematically over the generations and are now available to the
general population. Primitive and modern individuals possess essentially the same
cognitive potential.
-His most vocal critics in the next generation were those who, unlike Boas, had a strong
theoretical position to defend.
-Leslie White and Marvin Harris, devotees of evolutionism who were sympathetic to
Marxism, portrayed Boas as one who refused to take a stand on the relationship between
one culture and another, and who, in his passion for data about particular individuals and
groups, neglected the material and technological basis of human activities.
-A. R. Radcliffe-Brown stressed the importance in anthropology of an undergirding theory;
he promoted a Durkheimian approach, in which the needs for group solidarity exert a
decisive impact on kinship structures and on the actions and beliefs of individuals.
Radcliffe-Brown also saw cultures as part of a social system, as organisms which evolve
toward increasing diversity and complexity.
-The functionalist approach of Malinowski evinced little interest in mental phenomena or in
historical factors. According to Malinowski, the anthropologist should search for the
various goals that a particular custom, material object, idea, or belief serves within a
society. His biologically and psychologically oriented explanations never captured the field.

The Special Status of Language and Linguistics

-Sapir and his student Whorf came to believe that the language used by a group has been a
principal determinant of the belief structures and the ways of thinking of that population.
The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same worlds
with different labels attached.
-Boas and Lvi-Strauss observed that neither language nor culture rise to consciousness.
Precisely because people are unaware of these structures, they are much less likely to revise
them at will or to invent ad hoc explanations of their nature and operation.
-Jakobson had pointed out that certain properties of the human mind determine the ways in
which language operates. Because human beings tend to perceive things in terms of
polarities, many important distinctions in language also prove to be binary. These features
do not exist in an unorganized fashion: they constitute a system, where the relations
obtaining between the features become primary.
The Structuralist Version
-Lvi-Strauss showed that key aspects of culture are best thought of as linguistic in nature
and are best approached by the methods of the structural linguist.
-Lvi-Strauss noted that in any kinship system one has as primary data both the system of
relations between terms (father, son) and the system of relations between attitudes
(intimate, distant). Playing structural linguist, one must take into account all the relevant
terms and the relationships among them all.
-Lvi-Strauss clarified the obscure nature of dual organizations where two parallel kinds
of clans, often exogamous, exist within the same village. Lvi-Strauss adduced evidence
that these dual organizations actually mask the underlying dynamic force, which arises
from the exchange of women and other commodities. It is this exchange, rather than the
external residence patterns, that reflects the actual social relations found in the village.
-He has sought to discover human mind: the ways in which humans takes in, classifies, and
interprets information. He has approached this assignment by studying the ways in which
individuals classify objects and elements, and the ways in which they create and understand
myths. Much of this work is put forth as being empirical-based on the classificatory
systems observed around the world and on the myths related in many Indian tribes. He
makes no secret of the fact that he must rely on his own intuitions too.
-In his studies of classification, he comes down decisively in favor of the proposition that
the principal feature of all minds is to classify, and that primitive individuals classify pretty
much along the same lines, and in the same ways, as the most civilized persons. The
primitive mind classifies everyday objects and experiences in terms of their overt
perceptual and sensory properties.
-In structuralist fashion, he proposed a breakdown of a myth into component parts or units
(the elementary phrases of the myth) and then the assembling of all units that refer to the
same theme or make the same point. He is willing to take any kind of myth fragment or
myth corpus and reduce and rearrange its elements, in order to come up with an account of
the themes with which it is working and the kinds of messages that seem implicit in it. The
simple empirical categories that populate myths are best conceived of as the conceptual
tools for approaching the more abstract concerns with which human beings everywhere
must grapple. Myths are not to be understood as independent of each other, but as
constituting a system.

-Dan Sperber thought that it is from the work of Chomsky, Fodor, and others of the
transformationalist school that the anthropologist must now seek models. Here the lessons
turn out to be largely negative. Sperber points out that most human beliefs are not purely
propositional but are rather semipropositional. It is risky to apply to such amorphous belief
systems the rigid classificatory grid of the syntactician or the phonologist. Instead, one
needs to study the processes whereby rich penumbras of meaning are evoked. Sperber's
positive contribution inheres in his characterization of symbolic processes: rather than
being induced or constructed from experience, the symbolic mechanisms are part of the
innate mental equipment which makes experience possible. Anthropology is the discipline
that has access to the fullest range of beliefs, practices, and symbolic systems; hence, it is in
a privileged position to lay bare the operation of those human symbolic mechanisms that
supplement the pure computational aspects involved in language, mathematics, and
ordinary classification.
-The most telling line of criticism against Lvi-Strauss questions whether polymorphous
human behavioral patterns and beliefs can lend themselves to the kind of systematic, rulebound, and "closed" analysis that has proved appropriate for certain aspects of linguistic
structures. Geertz criticizes Lvi-Strauss's mechanistic approach, his ignorance of the
particular historical conditions that spawn a given myth or social organization, the
minimization of affective and emotional factors, the loss of the specific individual with his
or her own needs, motivations, goals, and wishes. Geertz also questions the wisdom of
construing symbolic products as the output of internal cognitive mechanisms: according to
his more public view of mind, myths, rituals, beliefs, and the like are a socially generated
form of symbolization.
Ethnoscience
-Ethnoscience (or componential analysis, or ethnosemantics, or cognitive anthropology)
comprises the organized study of the thought systems of individuals in other cultures and
sometimes in our own. The background of systematic linguistics spawned the initial pair of
publications consciously styled in the ethnoscientific mode, like analyses of kinship
terminology. Drawing on the model of a linguist's grammar, ethnoscientists search for the
ways in which knowledge of a culture's rules is reflected in the behavior of natives, and
especially in their speech.
Componential analysis
-The method of componential analysis starts, for example, by taking a set of kinship terms.
Next, they define these terms with respect to genealogical relations. All terms are defined
through primitive forms and some simple operators. The third stage entails a number of
observations obtained from the definitions. Now comes the crucial stage: the analyst
hypothesizes that three dimensions will be sufficient to define all the terms: the sex of the
relative, generation, and lineality. In the next step the terms are redefined as points in a
three-dimensional space.
-A "formal account" of a collection of empirical data has been given when there have been
specified 1) a set of primitive elements, and 2) a set of rules for operating on these, such
that by the application of the latter to the former, the elements of a "model" are generated. A
formal account is thus an apparatus for predicting back the data at hand, thereby making
them "understandable".

-One test of the adequacy of this account is that it does not do violence to my own feel, as
informant, for the structure of what is described. This is the subjective test of adequacy. An
equally important test is that it provide an alien with the knowledge he needs to use my
kinship terminology in a way I will accept as corresponding with the way I use it. This is
the objective test of adequacy.
Critiques of Ethnoscience: From Within
-When one turns to domains like color, botany, and disease, it turns out to be more complex
to elicit the relevant terms and delineate the domain, let alone to ferret out the relevant
dimensions that may systematize the domain in a defensible and desirable way. Even when
the terms and dimensions have been delineated, the way in which to arrange them becomes
a subject of considerable controversy.
-Still thornier questions arise when one wants to determine whether a componential
analysis is appropriate, or which of a number of competing analyses is most accurate. The
"psychological reality" of an analysis is it in the heads of all informants, of trained and
reflective informants, or only in the head of the analyst? turns out to be one of the most
complex questions.
-There are also problems with homonyms and metaphors, where the same words might
have different meanings, or where different words might have the same meanings. There is
the problem of connotation, where words may have the same objective meaning but
connote different affective values.
-Other critics have argued that componential analysis is inherently circular, since one must
begin by assuming the very relationship among terms whose relationship should actually be
fixed only at the conclusion of the investigation.
-Some commentators have focused on the enormous problems of translating terms from a
foreign language into a familiar tongue and assuming that the same kinds of analysis can be
applied to the translations.
Critiques of Ethnoscience: Outside the Ranks
-Clifford Geertz points out that one has to pay attention to the logic exhibited in actual life,
not to some kind of abstracted set of symbolic elements whose validity for the inhabitants is
questionable at best. In the same line, Gary Witherspoon argues that many aspects of
importance are simply not marked in the language.
-Ethnoscience reflects an atomistic conception of language, without any sense of how
words function in a social context, the kinds of actions in which they are embedded, and the
ways in which they interact with and influence one another.
-Tyler held that the view of language as showing the cognitive systems of individuals
creates problems in understanding how the purely formal system of elements and rules
relates to something other than itself. Both create dualistic systems which oppose formal
linguistic competence to empirical components. Language is not merely a means of
representing ideas but equally a means for expressing wishes, feelings, and emotions and,
above all, a way of getting things done in the world. The independence of semantics from
pragmatics must be rejected.
-Compositional analysis rapidly become dysfunctional when applied to slippery areas, like
emotions or diseases, where the line around the domain is not announced in advance and
where an individual's (or a group's) idiosyncratic interpretive system comes more readily to
the fore.

-Stephen Murray discerns two different reasons for the evanescence of classical
ethnoscience. The first stems from a promise that was not fulfilled: during a study of
drinking in Chiapas, investigators could not find objective procedures to systematize the
collected information. The second reason is that ethnoscience never cohered into a single
integrated perspective but was, at best, a loose confederation.
Psychological Forays
-Investigators of perceptual capacities found that on certain items, such as the Mller-Lyer
illusion, European and American samples proved more susceptible to illusions. These
seemed to show that the experience of groups conditioned the way their members
perceived.
-An early wave of studies of reasoning capacities was sympathetic to the notion that people
outside the West performed far more poorly on tests of abstraction, conceptualization, and
classification. Some important methodological adjustments were made, and it emerged that,
when familiar materials were used, or when requested behavior was explained to or
modeled for the subjects, many of the documented differences between individuals from
the two cultures now evaporated. The fundamental operations of thought are the same
everywhere, and it is the uses to which these processes are put that differ dramatically
across cultures. Superimposed upon this basic continuity is the advent of certain abilities to
reason without the usual contextual supports, or to carry through certain complex chains of
reasoning, which seem to develop chiefly among individuals exposed to years of Westernstyle secular schooling.
-There was a widespread suspicion among anthropologists that the differences between
conceptual systems in remote cultures were vast and that these might well reflect variations
in the structure or the contents of language. However, in a line of study which continues to
exert wide influence in several cognitive sciences, Eleanor Rosch strongly challenged the
Whorfian line: she demonstrated that, even in cultures with few color terms, individuals
still sort, classify, and otherwise deal with the color spectrum in roughly similar ways.
-These lines of work have helped swing the pendulum of anthropological analysis back to
the pole of universalism. Individuals perceive and classify in relatively similar ways, and
the ways in which they classify reflect the operation of deep principles of mind which
cannot easily be dislocated.
-One productive way in which the anthropological community can solve the tension
between universalism and relativism is to inform its studies with promising concepts or
methods from cognitive science. There are some investigations that cherish the individual
details of particular groups in their home context: they pointedly spurn premature
generalizations or excessive reliance on arbitrary sorting tasks. Still, when proper caution is
taken, forms of thinking in remote settings do lend themselves to comparison with the kinds
of thought process exhibited and the kinds of measure used in traditional Western-schooled
settings.
-While most energy in recent years has been devoted to the increasingly fine-grained
analysis of particular domains, some investigators remain interested in the general
conundrums of how culture is possible, how it is constituted, and how it is acquired. Part of
the interest unfolds in an evolutionary framework. Moving to a briefer time frame, other
investigators have raised the question of how children in a society "learn culture, using a
computational metaphor to account for that learning.

-The success of the cognitive scientific approach to anthropology will hinge on whether the
rigor of componential analysis (or some other computationally inspired approach) can be
wedded to the broad issues that have traditionally attracted scholars to the study of exotic
cultures.
-In a sense, it is useful to think of anthropology as representing a kind of "upper bound" for
cognitive science. Anthropology clearly deals with issues representing very large bodies
(such as entire cultures) and spanning a quite wide scope (such as the relationship between
a culture's linguistic practices and its thought patterns).
-It may turn out, however, that cognitive scientific methods are only partially successful in
dealing with such a broad assignment or can only be usefully brought to bear upon the most
constrained (and possibly the least interesting) domains. If, in the last analysis,
anthropology proves to lie largely outside of the mainstream of cognitive science, this will
be an important (if somewhat disappointing) finding. And it may signal the even less happy
outcome that large areas of psychology, philosophy, and linguistics may also fall outside of
cognitive science, at least as currently practiced.
-The question of how to study the mind remains hotly debated. In the last several years a
moderate middle ground between structuralism and hermeneutics seems to be emerging.
According to this tack, anthropology remains the field where careful case studies are
indispensable and where keen attention to particularities remains of enduring importance.
At the same time, there is no reason why these studies cannot be informed by the most
salient and useful cognitive concepts and analytic frameworks. Cognitive science can
contribute to anthropology, without enveloping it.
-In the last analysis, all that can be attained by any individual in any culture is restricted by
the particular species to which one belongs, and, more specifically, by the nervous system
that one possesses by virtue of one's humanity. For this reason, anthropologists of every
stripe savored discoveries about the human as an organism. Such insights from the areas of
biology and neuroscience will not in themselves answer questions about culture.
Neuroscience serves as a kind of "lower bound" to cognitive science and thus is maximally
distant from anthropology. But, in due course, findings from the study of the human
nervous system may well illuminate how an individual becomes able in such short order to
assimilate and to transmit to others the practices of the culture in which he or she happens
to live.

9. Neuroscience: The Flirtation with Reductionism

Karl Lashley Poses a Research Agenda
The Lesion Technique
-Lashley made extensive use of the technique of ablation, where specific areas of the
nervous system are destroyed by means of a surgical lesion. The basic goal of the ablation
technique is to determine which behavior is impaired or destroyed following a punctate
lesion, and thereby to infer which functions are typically served by that region of the brain.
-He strongly questioned the significance of specific neural zones and connections: it is very
doubtful that the same neurons or synapses are involved even in two similar reactions for
the same stimulus. The mechanisms of integration are to be sought in the dynamic relations
among the parts of the nervous system rather than in details of structural differentiation.

-Lashley was calling into question localization, the belief that specific behavior resides in
specific neural locations. At the same time, if less explicitly, he was also posing difficulties
for reductionism, the scientific program that seeks to explain behavior entirely in terms of
neural (or other lower-order) principles.
Equipotentiality and Engrams
-Lashley was attracted to the principal ideas of Gestalt psychology: perhaps the brain works
as an integrated unit, responding as an organized totality to complex patterns of stimulation.
-He spoke of equipotentiality, the capacity of any part of a functional area to carry out a
particular behavior. Impairment in performance is due not to the site of the injury, but rather
to the amount of tissue destroyed. All of the cells of the brain are constantly active and are
participating, by a sort of algebraic summation, in every activity. There are no special cells
reserved for special memories. He pondered also the property of plasticity, the potential for
remaining areas of the nervous system to take over when a specific region has been
damaged.
-Lashley concluded that we would never find the engram, the discrete representation in the
nervous system of specific ideas, concepts, or behaviors. During learning, information
comes to be represented widely within large regions of the brain, if not throughout the brain
as a whole. Whether the cells can be mobilized to carry out an impaired function depends
upon the percentage of them still remaining after brain injury, the degree to which the
pattern of behavior has been mastered beforehand, and the strength of motivation of the
animal.
-Lashley he helped to cast doubt on the reflect arc, the bond whereby each response is
triggered by a specific stimulus, which had been the principal neural model of behavior in
higher (as well as lower) organisms.
Lashley's Iconoclasm
-Lashley demonstrated that many sequences of behavior exhibited long planning units
which unfold too quickly for them to be altered or corrected live. In his view, it was
necessary to reconceptualize current associationist models of the nervous system to allow
for effects that can be manifest for a significant period after initial stimulation. No simple
stimulus-response bonds can explain this behavior: one needs a model of the nervous
system which is hierarchically arranged and features feedback and feed-forward
mechanisms.
-Lashley has criticized the comparison between the brain ant the computer. The neuron, like
a switch or valve, either does or does not complete a circuit. But at that point the similarity
ends. The switch in the digital computer is constant in its effect, and its effect is large in
proportion to the total output of the machine. The effect produced by the neuron varies with
its recovery from [the] refractory phase and with its metabolic state. The number of neurons
involved in any action runs into millions so that the influence of any one is negligible. Any
cell in the system can be dispensed with. The brain is an analogical machine, not digital.
-Lashley described behavior that eluded current mechanistic models and strongly implied
more abstract and hierarchically organized forms of representation. He did not call for
explanations on the mentalistic level, but his work, and his talk of "plans" and "structures",
cleared the way for Simon's belief in a symbol system, Piaget's call for mental operations,
Miller's TOTE system, and Chomsky's resorting to rules and representations.

-The nervous system turns out to be far more specific, far less equipotential than Lashley
had contended. His belief that the brain works in a Gestalt-like fashion would find few
adherents today.
-It has been held by many scientists, especially neuroscientists, that the optimal way to
account for human behavior and thoughts is in terms of the structure and functioning of the
human nervous system. To some investigators, this neuroanatomical account can
complement accounts proffered in psychological or behavioral language; but for others,
neuroanatomical accounts may eventually render unnecessary accounts in terms of
representations, or symbols, or other psychological argot. In the view of this latter
reductionist group, cognitive science emerges as, at best, a temporary account of mental
activity destined to vanish once an account in terms of synapses can be attained. The debate
about the possibility and the desirability of reductionism lurks in the background in any
account of neuroscientific work.
How Specific Is Neural Functioning?
Evidence for Localization
-Toward the end of the nineteenth century, the work of Fritsch, Hitzig, Ferrier and Broca
made the pendulum began to swing from Flourenss holism toward Galls localizationism.
It was a heyday for scholars of a localizationist persuasion. With increasingly sophisticated
methods for testing animals, claims were made for specificity in each region of the cortex.
As additional case studies of brain-injured patients accumulated, claims about the
astonishing specificity of certain cognitive deficits were forthcoming.
The Resurgence of Holism
-Against Broca, Pierre Marie showed that the third frontal convolution plays no special role
in the function of language, and that each of Broca's patients had far more extensive lesions
than Broca had reported, and the range of accompanying deficits had not been documented
with sufficient precision. Within a few years, a variety of neurologists had endorsed his
claims that cognitive functions are not highly localized in the nervous system. They
adduced evidence that the same kinds of deficits could be obtained from individuals with
lesions in a wide variety of areas; and conversely, patients with similar anatomical lesions
often exhibited contrasting sets of deficits or even at times no deficits at all. They spoke of
the plasticity of the nervous system, the capacity of uninjured areas to take over from
injured areas, and the loss of abstract thinking and other functions as a consequence of the
size, rather than the site, of lesion.
-Holists were far more sympathetic to the notion that behavior could not be explained
satisfactorily in terms of neural circuitry. As they saw it, there was a continued need for
explanation on the psychological level. There was a correlation between skepticism about
localization and skepticism about reductionism not a logically necessary association, to be
sure, but a meeting of two ideas in the minds of many scientists.
-Localization of symptoms did not signify localization of function. A specific section of the
brain may be necessary for a specific function, but there may be other sections that are also
necessary for that function.
Evaluating the Evidence

-By the end of the 1940s, many investigators were seeking some rapprochement between
the rabid holists and the extreme localizers. Claims about highly specific syndromes
following highly specific lesions could not be maintained; the variation across patterns, and
across clinics, was simply too great. Besides, any number of lines of investigation undercut
the extreme holist position.
Donald Hebb's Bold Synthesis
-Hebb argued that behavioral patterns, such as visual perceptions, are built up gradually
over long periods of time through the connection of particular sets of cells, which he called
cell assemblies. To this extent, behaviors or percepts can indeed be localized in specific
regions. However, with time, more complex behaviors come to be formed out of sets of cell
assemblies, which he called phase sequences. These phase sequences are less localized, and
involve much larger sets of cells drawn from disparate sections of the nervous system. A
phase sequence inevitably involves some equipotentiality. Finally, by the time the organism
has reached maturity and is capable of performing the most complex forms of behavior, it is
difficult to attribute any behavior to a discrete set of neurons in a delineated region of the
brain. It would be an oversimplification to see the developmental course as proceeding
from localizing to holism; for, in other respects, the sequence is exactly the reverse. A
beneficial effect of Hebb's work was to point up these various complexities and competing
tendencies, making it less plausible for anyone to adopt a rigid localizing or an inflexible
holist position.
The Hixon Symposium Revisited
-During the Hixon Symposium, the major neurologists, neurophysiologists, and
neuropsychologists debated with one another the tenability of the localization position.
Hubel and Wiesel's Decisive Demonstrations
-In the late 1950s, David Hubel and Torsten Wiesel began to record with microelectrodes
impulses from single cells in the cortex of cats and other animals. They demonstrated
beyond any doubt that specific cells in the visual cortex respond to specific forms of
information in the environment. They also demonstrated the critical role played by certain
early experiences in the development of the nervous system. For those in sympathy with
specificity and localization of function, the last few decades have yielded much confirming
evidence.
The Molar Perspective
Sperry on Split Brains
-Because they were suffering from intractable epilepsy, a small group of patients were
subjected to a surgical intervention where the two halves of the brain were disconnected
from one another. Sperry devised methods for testing separately the two halves of the brain.
He documented important differences in the functioning of two hemispheres. Sperry
reinforced the impression that the left hemisphere is dominant for language and other
conceptual and classificatory functions, while the right hemisphere assumes a dominant
role for spatial functions and for other fine-grained forms of discrimination. However, the
Sperry team was able to show some holistic conclusions: the right hemisphere of righthanded persons was capable of far more linguistic functioning than had hitherto been

thought. Besides, the younger they had been at the time of their operation, the more likely it
was that patients would reveal well-developed capacities in both hemispheres.
Gradients of Plasticity and Hierarchy of Functions
-Sperry's results suggest that the degree of plasticity depends of the earliness of the injury.
Other factors also influence the degree of plasticity: for example, younger individuals who
are left-handed or who have sustained some brain injury early in life also exhibit more
plasticity than those who exhibit contrasting traits.
-With development, different nervous centers gain dominance, and the hierarchy among
behavioral functions alters. For instance, in young children, sensory regions are dominant;
but in older individuals, the association cortexes and the "planning regions" of the frontal
lobes become ascendant. According to Luria's studies, no function is carried out fully by a
specific region, but nor is it the case, as Lashley implied, that all regions figure equally in a
specific function. Rather, several anatomical regions may figure in the performance of a
particular behavior, but each of them makes a characteristic and irreplaceable contribution.
-While, in general, it is preferable to sustain an injury to the brain early rather than late in
life, and to exploit the plasticity of that developmental stage, early is not always better.
There are at least three caveats. First of all, sometimes an early injury manifests no
apparent deficits at the time but produces severe deficits later in life. Second, when another
area of the brain takes over, the "rescuer" may well sacrifice the potential for carrying out
its own preordained functions. Finally, even when another area of the brain assumes a
function, it may not do so in an optimal way.
-Other considerations militate against a purely "plastic" perspective. Work in experimental
psychology documents that organisms are "prepared" to master certain behaviors and
"counterprepared" to learn other ones.
The Neural Base of Cognition: Studies of Two Systems
-It is now conceded that, at least at the level of sensory processing, the nervous system is
specifically constructed to respond to certain kinds of information in certain kinds of ways.
There is also evidence for "neural commitment" at much more molar levels of
representation, even extending to the two cerebral hemispheres. On the other hand,
impressive evidence continues to accumulate documenting the resilience and plasticity in
the nervous system, particularly during the early phases of development. As a tentative
conclusion, then, it seems that some localization is accepted by all, but that important
islands of plasticity remain within this general framework.
-Studies have reverted to a more circumscribed terrain. Neuroscientists are devoting the
bulk of their time to the careful study of specific systems in specific organisms.
Eric Kandel Bridges a Gap
Recently Eric Kandel has succeeded in bridging the gap between the functioning of the
individual nerve cell and the behavior of organisms. He focused on a snail, whose nervous
system can be readily described and which is also capable of simple forms of learning.
Kandel has shown that these elementary aspects of learning are not diffusely distributed in
the brain but rather can be localized in the activity of specific parts of neuronal networks.
Learning results from an alteration in the synaptic connections between cells; rather than
necessarily entailing new synaptic connections, learning and memory customarily come
about as a consequence of alteration in the relative strength of already existing contacts.

The potentialities for many behaviors of which an organism is capable are built into the
basic scaffolding of the brain and are to that extent under genetic and developmental
control. Environmental factors and learning bring out these latent capabilities by altering
the effectiveness of the pre-existing pathways thereby leading to the expression of new
patterns of behavior.
The Song of Birds
Fernando Nottebohm has studied the songs of birds. He showed that various deprivations
exert predictable influences on the course of song development. Canaries, for example,
require auditory feedback for normal development. They can, however, go on to produce a
well-structured song even in the absence of hearing the vocalizations of other members of
their species: their own songs suffice. In the chaffinch, however, both auditory feedback of
one's own song and exposure to the songs of other birds are needed if the chaffinch is to
produce a full normal song. Bird song is one of the few instances of brain lateralization
among infrahuman animals. The aphasic canary can recover its prior songs because the
homologous pathways of the right hemisphere have the potential of being exploited.
-The work of investigators like Nottebohm and Kandel is based on the premise that much
can be learned at this point through the careful study of a single system in a single
organism.
-The two research efforts proceed on somewhat different assumptions. Kandel hopes that
by studying habituation and conditioning, he will eventually illuminate processes known to
occur in a wide range of organisms, including humans. The Nottebohm line of research, on
the other hand, studies bird song as a behavior that clearly exists only in birds, and any
generalizations that may be validly extended from bird song to other systems in other
organisms will only emerge after careful study of these systems on their own terms. There
is the same tension between a modular and a general point of view.
-Hubel and Wiesel hold the belief that systems may work in their own way. Each region of
the central nervous system has its own special problems that require different solutions. For
the major aspects of the brain's operation no master solution is likely.
-The work of Kandel (and to a lesser extent of Nottebohm) raises afresh the issue of
reductionism. It seems to some observers that an account of the classical psychological
phenomenon of habituation in terms of neurochemical reactions is an important step on the
road to the absorption of cognition by the neurosciences. Yet most scientists of a cognitive
persuasion feel that such accounts, while informative, will still prove tangential to their
ultimate interests.
Pribram's Holographic Hypothesis
Pribram argued that the brain is better analogized to a holographic process. Holography is a
system of photography in which a three-dimensional image of an object can be reproduced
(with the appearance of the third dimension preserved) by means of light-wave patterns
recorded on a photographic plate or film. A hologram is the plate or film with the recorded
pattern: information about any point in the original image is distributed throughout the
hologram, thus making it resistant to damage. According to Pribram's holographic view, all
parts of the brain are capable of participating in all forms of representation, though
admittedly certain regions play a more important role in some functions, and other regions
are more dominant for other functions. Just as many holograms can be superimposed upon

one another, so can infinite images be stacked inside our brains. Since the hologram records
the same wave front over its surface, repeating it over and over, if only some of a shattered
hologram is left, it will still suffice to reconstruct the entire image. What interests brain
theorists about the hologram is this quality of a distributed memory: every piece of the
hologram says a little bit about every part of the scene, but no piece is essential.
Three Historical Moments
We might single out three moments in the age-old debate about the degree of localization of
representation in the human nervous system.
-The first moment involved scientific insights. When Descartes located the soul in the
pineal gland, when Gall spoke about the representation of amativeness and of criminality in
different lobes of the brain, each was announcing claims without benefit of experimental
evidence.
-A significant step forward took place when it was possible to examine the effects of
injuries to discrete areas of the nervous system. When Fritsch and Hitzig lesioned specific
sites in the nervous system of dogs, when Broca and Wernicke looked at the effects of
strokes in the human cerebral cortex, they were able to substantiate correlations between
regions of the brain and forms of behavior.
-Finally, when Hubel and Wiesel recorded from discrete cells in the visual cortex of the cat,
it became possible to ascertain with great specificity the function of particular units and the
circumstances under which they would function (or fail to function) normally.
-The thrust of the new research lines has had two effects: first, to render localization as a
more plausible general orientation; second, to direct the attention of active scientists to the
operation of specific systems, rather than to continued debate on broad conceptual issues.
And yet it is far too early to claim that the pendulum has stopped swinging, or that the
pivotal questions motivating neuroscience have been answered. The voices in favor of mass
action and plasticity have not been stilled. Moreover, within the specific areas of higher
cognitive functioning there remain debates about even the most basic issues. Moreover,
even if localization seems (on the whole) to be more tenable than holism, it is now apparent
that reductionism is a separate issue.
Will Neuroscience Devour Cognitive Science?
-Researchers in the neurosciences stand out from their cognitive-scientific peers because
they most closely partake of the model of the successful sciences of physics and biology,
because they can most readily state their questions unambiguously and monitor progress
toward their solutions.
-They are not all that different. Fundamental debate continues on many of the central
questions. While rapidly growing, neuroscience is a young field and is still in the process of
defining, rather than resolving, many principal issues.
-There are those (perhaps a majority) within the neurosciences who would maintain that
cognitive scientific concepts and concerns are not relevant to a biologically oriented
science. So long as the science remains relatively immature, it may be necessary, for the
time being, to carry out psychological experiments or to engage in computer simulations of
behavior. But once the appropriate neuroscientific studies have been carried out,
explanations that feature behaviors, thoughts, actions, schemas, or other molar or
representational concepts should become superfluous.

-There is a parallel reductionist tendency within the neurosciences themselves. So long as

the science remains immature, it may be necessary to speak about occurrences at molar
neural levels. But ultimately such talk should disappear, as the same occurrences can be
accounted for at the level of a particular cell.
-From the perspective of cognitive science these lines of argument are untenable. One
cannot have an adequate theory about anything the brain does unless one also has an
adequate theory about that activity itself. It is not possible to enter into the nervous system
as a disinterested observer who is simply chronicling the facts. Both the topics studied, and
the ways in which they are studied, will reflect implicit theories: theories about what
perception, cognition, or language are; what is important in each; and how each of these
processes occurs.
-I think it best to regard neuroscience as one of the border disciplines of cognitive science.
Many of the phenomena investigated by neuroscientists are either accounted for perfectly
adequately without any reference to the representational level or allow but a subsidiary role
for representational aspects. Such phenomena do not belong to the mainstream of cognitive
science, any more than do discussions of the religious system of an aboriginal tribe. But
once neuroscientists begin to invade domains that entail more complex forms of mentation
there is no longer any possibility of finessing these representational issues. It is at this point
that interdisciplinary cooperation becomes an imperative. And it is at this point that the
cognitive challenge arises: how best to build explanatory bridges between the level of the
neuron and the level of the rule or the concept.