ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to dynamical systems theory, including its methods, central features, and the ways it is taken to conflict with computational theories. It resolves these conflicts, by showing that at least two points on which these theories are presumed to conflict need not be seen as conflicts. The chapter shows that, because computational and dynamical approaches are, at the very least, complementary, the source of conflict is not the approaches themselves, but the dogmatic '–isms' to which theorists commit themselves. It introduces a view of dynamical and computational explanations which is sufficiently broad to encompass both kinds of explanation. Dynamical information processing (DIP) is broadly compatible with computational explanation, but drawing from insights in embodied cognition, extended cognition, and ecological psychology. Prior to the rise of the dynamical framework, the computational theory of mind (CTM), or the hypothesis that cognition is, or can best be described as, a computational process, was the dominant framework in cognitive science.
