Page 42 - Deep Learning

The Nature of the Enterprise 25

or in the cognitive sciences in general. The floor of the cognitive theorist’s
workshop is strewn with debris from past theories, including the behaviorists’
4
stimulus-response connections and Jean Piaget’s developmental stages. These
theories turned out to be less than explanatory, everyone now agrees, but so,
I suggest, are most other explanations for cognitive change, including those
5
proposed since the cognitive revolution in the 1950s. If so, what should a sat-
isfactory explanation be like instead?
The first task is to establish that mind is the proper subject matter of psy-
chology. There have been multiple attempts to escape.

CLOSING THE ESCAPE ROUTES

Psychology is the science of mind. Nevertheless, some psychologists have tried to
replace the task of describing how the mind works by the task of describing some-
thing else. Different schools of thought have proposed different replacements.
According to the phenomenological approach, to describe mind is to
describe subjective experience; that is, to state what a person is consciously per-
ceiving, feeling, remembering and thinking. Once the contents of conscious-
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ness have been described, there is yet more to say, but what is left to say falls
within the scope of neuroscience. Phenomenologists do not deny mind but
limit its scope. Psychology’s responsibilities end at the edge of consciousness;
the rest is neurons.
The emphasis on subjective experience is useful. Cognitive processes
are expressed in subjective experience as well as in action and discourse. For
example, we are all familiar with the frustration of trying to recall a name or a
fact that refuses to be recalled, the elation associated with a sudden insight into
a recalcitrant problem and the satisfaction of performing a complex skill thor-
oughly mastered. If psychology is to be a tool for understanding ourselves, our
theories must explain the flow of subjective experiences as well as the streams
of action and discourse.
But basic facts about cognition reveal as fallacious the idea that the mind
can be reduced to nothing but subjective experience. Consider trying to recall
a name, failing to do so but spontaneously succeeding a short while later. There
cannot be a phenomenological explanation of this type of cognitive event. The
subjective experience consists of the effort to recall, the blank mind that accom-
panies failure to recall and the slight surprise and relief of tension that accompa-
nies the subsequent success. But this remains a description, not an explanation.
The process that produces these conscious experiences – retrieval from long-term
memory – is not itself conscious. An account of the subjective experiences, no