ABSTRACT
It is most odd that scientists deal in knowledge – and exercise immense power through knowledge – yet view with deep suspicion explanations in terms of cognitive concepts. Thus psychology is hardly recognized as a respectable science, except when couched in the terms of physics-based sciences such as physiology. If one speaks, for example, to a molecular biologist – and of course they are very well worth listening to – in terms of perception being knowledge-based active processes, his eyes will glass over. They glaze with the kind of frosty glass that protects ladies’ modesty in showers. And as the lady can look out better than you can look in, just so one is trapped into a losing position where explanation becomes powerless. The objection, it seems, is that cognitive accounts in terms of more or less appropriate deployment of knowledge look spooky, as they are not in terms of causal mechanisms. I know this reaction as well as anyone, as I have been plugging cognitive accounts of perceptual illusions for many years. But I persist, for, like it or not, mechanisms can be controlled by symbols.
