On (not) defining cognition

Colin Allen

pp. 4233-4249

in: Cameron Buckner, Ellen Fridland (eds), Cognition, Synthese 194 (11), 2017.

Abstract

Should cognitive scientists be any more embarrassed about their lack of a discipline-fixing definition of cognition than biologists are about their inability to define “life”? My answer is “no”. Philosophers seeking a unique “mark of the cognitive” or less onerous but nevertheless categorical characterizations of cognition are working at a level of analysis upon which hangs nothing that either cognitive scientists or philosophers of cognitive science should care about. In contrast, I advocate a pluralistic stance towards uses of the term ‘cognition’ that eschews the urge to treat cognition as a metaphysically well-defined “natural” kind.