ABSTRACT
The conglomerate that makes up cognitive science includes portions of psychology, artificial intelligence, and linguistics, as well as anthropology, philosophy, and neuroscience. There can be no doubt that, in some of these disciplines, considerable progress has occurred during the last decade and that, therefore, cognitive science is a field of genuine promise today. But in what sense does cognitive science transcend these individual disciplines? At the moment, attitudinal differences in methodology sometimes preclude productive interactions. Of course, each discipline should have its own research style, and there can be no question of imposing some common methodology on cognitive science as a whole. But we must aim for a better understanding of the goals and methods employed by other disciplines and an appreciation of the strengths and limitations of these methods. After all, cognitive science is built on the premise that these methods complement each other, thereby permitting us to advance research in cognition beyond our own discipline’s boundaries.
