ABSTRACT
In the last twenty years, there has been an explosion of creative thought about the nature of our ordinary cognitive abilities.1 This has occurred in psycholinguistics, artificial intelligence, psycho-neurophysiology, and cognitive psychology. Though there are many differences within the cognitive sciences, they for the most part share important fundamental and informing conceptions of cognition. The guiding ideal is that of finding the “internal” rules governing mental function. Implicit in this ideal are four philosophical commitments. These commitments, I would argue, are what bind together the cognitive sciences, forming a new paradigm that I shall call “cognitivism.”2
