ABSTRACT
The fundamental concern of cognitive science is to understand the nature of both the structural and functional properties of intellectual capacity and intellectual operation. And in so far as such a goal is maintained as a central focus in each of the various fields comprising cognitive science it will follow that roughly the same set of general theoretical issues and methodological approaches will be at stake in each. However, it is equally clear that any real catholicity of theory and methodology across disciplines can only exist when these fields (including, at least, aspects of psychology, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence) share in detail the same underlying assumptions about the nature of these issues and their possible solution sets. Thus, it is impossible to overstate the importance that such (typically unstated) assumptions play in constraining theoretical and practical approaches to any issue and in making approaches incorporating one constellation of assumptions unintelligible to those with a slightly different constellation.
