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The Nature of the Enterprise 39

conception dominates contemporary cognitive psychology. Information pro-
cessing concepts are used up and down the pages of cognitive psychology text-
books. Few of the experiments reported in psychological research articles make
sense unless we assume that there is a cognitive architecture that remains stable
across tasks and content domains; after all, the tasks performed by the subjects
in those experiments are seldom of any intrinsic interest.
Nevertheless, the Turing-Newell conception is unlikely to be correct. It
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is not plausible that representations and processes are as neatly separated in
the brain as they are in a computer. It seems more plausible that the medium
of mind will ultimately turn out to be representations that are also processes,
or processes that also represent. We do not know how to model such strange
entities. Also, the assumption of a fixed, presumably innate control structure
might have to yield to a more fluid notion of control that emerges through self-
organization at the neural level. But such developments are in the future, so the
following chapters adopt a Newell-inspired view of the cognitive architecture as
a conceptual platform from which to pursue principles of cognitive change.

EXPLAINING CHANGE
If the mind is a system for processing knowledge representations in the service
of action and discourse, how does it change over time? What form should an
explanation for cognitive change take? What are the criteria of a satisfactory
explanation and what issues arise in the construction of such explanations? It
is informative to consider successful explanations for other types of change.
Cognitive psychologists need not imitate other sciences or assume that their
own theories must, in the end, look like those of any other science, but neither
is it wise to assume that other sciences have no lessons to teach. Natural scien-
tists, social scientists and humanists have grappled with the concept of change
and their successes provide calories for psychological thought.

Componential Explanations
To extract the general features of scientific explanations of change, consider con-
tagion and electrolysis, two seemingly different phenomena. How do contagious
diseases like yellow fever spread such that we suffer epidemics? It required con-
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siderable research to identify all parts of this complicated process. Although a
specialist on yellow fever could add innumerable details, a mere outline suffices
here: The disease is caused by a germ that multiplies in a person’s body, causing
the symptoms. The sick person is bitten by a mosquito, which sucks up blood