ABSTRACT
Having considered a specific case of cognitive scientific analysis, we should now examine the broader theoretical principles that underlie that analysis and define cognitive science as a research program. Most basically, cognitive science is an interdisciplinary form of study aimed at understanding human cognition. It grew out of post-Behaviorist psychology, linguistics (especially Chomskyan linguistics), computer science, and, later on, neurobiology, though it now has connections with virtually every discipline in the modern university. Cognitive science includes a range of schools and tendencies that often seem to have little to do with one another. Nonetheless, there are common methodological principles shared by all or at least most cognitive scientists. I will begin by setting out some of these common principles, before turning to a more detailed look at the two most prominent schools of cognitive science today—representationalism and connectionism.
