Cognitive dynamical models as minimal models
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Cognitive dynamical models as minimal models Travis Holmes1 Received: 22 February 2020 / Accepted: 18 September 2020 © Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract The debate over the explanatory nature of cognitive models has been waged mostly between two factions: the mechanists and the dynamical systems theorists. The former hold that cognitive models are explanatory only if they satisfy a set of mapping criteria, particularly the 3M/3M* requirement. The latter have argued, pace the mechanists, that some cognitive models are both dynamical and constitute covering-law explanations. In this paper, I provide a minimal model interpretation of dynamical cognitive models, arguing that this both provides needed clarity to the mechanist versus dynamicist divide in cognitive science and also paves the way towards further insights about scientific explanation generally. Keywords Minimal model · Dynamical systems · Cognitive science · Mechanism
1 Introduction The debate over the explanatory status of cognitive models has been principally waged by two camps: the mechanists and the dynamical systems theorists (hereafter DS). The mechanists have argued that while some cognitive models are dynamical, they ultimately fail to constitute explanations since they do not satisfy the 3M/3M* model to mapping requirement, amounting to little more than phenomenal models (Machamer et al. 2000; Craver 2006; Kaplan and Craver 2011). Per the 3M/3M* requirement, the explanatory strength of a model is determinable by the following two criteria: first, the extent to which the model’s variables are mapped onto or correspond to the components or activities which produce or underly the target mechanism and second, if the dependency relations which correspond to the variables in the model capture the causal relations among the components of the target mechanism (Craver and Kaplan 2020). DS proponents have countered that, pace the mechanists, some cognitive models are both dynamical and explanatory since these models are formable
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Travis Holmes [email protected] Department of Philosophy, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO 65201, USA
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into covering-law explanations (van Gelder 1995; Clark 1997; Bechtel 1998; Walmsley 2008). Dynamical models usually predict a certain effect and this fact is sometimes taken to be indicative that dynamical, cognitive explanations are capable of bearing counterfactual support which is a mark in their explanatory favor; the models enable deductive inferences about how the predicted effect would vary under a range of non-actual or counterfactual circumstances (Woodward 2003). An impasse was thus formed between these two groups about models and explanations in cognitive science although more recently there have been investigations into whether there is room for complementarity between the two approaches (Chemero 2000; Zednick 2011; Chirimuuta 2014). As a way of breaking out of this entrenchment, I shall argue that some cognitive models are both dynamical and explanatory not because they can be constru
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