creators_name: Harnad, Stevan editors_name: Simon, T. editors_name: Scholes, R. type: bookchapter datestamp: 1998-05-19 lastmod: 2011-03-11 08:54:10 metadata_visibility: show title: Neoconstructivism: A Unifying Constraint for the Cognitive Sciences ispublished: pub subjects: cog-psy subjects: comp-sci-art-intel subjects: phil-mind full_text_status: public keywords: cognition, computation, computability, constructivism, theory abstract: 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. date: 1982 date_type: published publication: Language, mind and brain publisher: Hillsdale NJ: Erlbaum pagerange: 1-11 refereed: FALSE citation: Harnad, Stevan (1982) Neoconstructivism: A Unifying Constraint for the Cognitive Sciences. [Book Chapter] document_url: http://cogprints.org/662/1/harnad82.neoconst.html