title: Neoconstructivism: A Unifying Constraint for the Cognitive Sciences creator: Harnad, Stevan subject: Cognitive Psychology subject: Artificial Intelligence subject: Philosophy of Mind description: Behavioral scientists studied behavior; cognitive scientists study what generates behavior. Cognitive science is hence theoretical behaviorism (or behaviorism is experimental cognitivism). Behavior is data for a cognitive theorist. What counts as a theory of behavior? In this paper, a methodological constraint on theory construction -- "neoconstructivism" -- will be proposed (by analogy with constructivism in mathematics): Cognitive theory must be computable; given an encoding of the input to a behaving system, a theory must be able to compute (an encoding of) its outputs. It is a mistake to conclude, however, that this constraint requires cognitive theory to be computational, or that it follows from this that cognition is computation. publisher: Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum contributor: Simon, T. contributor: Scholes, R. date: 1982 type: Book Chapter type: NonPeerReviewed format: text/html identifier: http://cogprints.org/662/1/harnad82.neoconst.html identifier: Harnad, Stevan (1982) Neoconstructivism: A Unifying Constraint for the Cognitive Sciences. [Book Chapter] relation: http://cogprints.org/662/