Reassessing the Cognitive Revolution

Abstract

Abstract The inspiration for this chapter-and in many ways, for the conference “Reassessing the Cognitive Revolution” that we held at York-was Jerome Bruner’s Acts of Meaning. Acts of Meaning is very much an act full of meaning, and, some will say, of hubris. In it Bruner denounces materialism, reductionism, physicalism, computationalism, and information-processing: in short, he repudiates artificial intelligence (Al) (see Bruner, 1990, pp. ixff., 4ff.). So concerned is he to combat what he sees as the “trivializing” effect that AI has had on psychology that he calls for a “renewing” and a “reorientation” of the cognitive revolution. To find one of the architects of cognitive science disavowing what so many of us had come to regard as the foundation of the discipline is an event worthy of more than just an article, or even a conference. It demands-as Bruner clearly intended-that we undertake a full review and reassessment of the cognitive revolution, and the dominating role AI so quickly came to play in it (see Shanker, 1992, 1993).

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