Working memory is not a natural kind and cannot explain central cognition
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Working memory is not a natural kind and cannot explain central cognition Javier Gomez-Lavin 1 # Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Working memory is a foundational construct of cognitive psychology, where it is thought to be a capacity that enables us to keep information in mind and to use that information to support goal directed behavior. Philosophers have recently employed working memory to explain central cognitive processes, from consciousness to reasoning. In this paper, I show that working memory cannot meet even a minimal account of natural kindhood, as the functions of maintenance and manipulation of information that tie working memory models and theories together do not have a coherent or univocal realizer in the brain. As such, working memory cannot explain central cognition. Rather, I argue that working memory merely redescribes its target phenomenon, and in doing so it obfuscates relevant distinctions amongst the many ways that brains like ours retain and transform information in the service of cognition. While this project ultimately erodes the explanatory role that working memory has played in our understanding of cognition, it simultaneously prompts us to evaluate the function of natural kinds within cognitive science, and signals the need for a productive pessimism to frame our future study of cognitive categories.
1 Preliminaries to the current project Working memory is thought to be a domain general capacity that enables us to keep information in mind and to use that information in the service of our goals (Baddeley 2007). A classic example of it in action occurs when you try to keep a phone number in mind, where many people will rehearse the digits using internal speech. Working memory is attractive to philosophers precisely because it provides a scientifically vetted construct that is implicated in and that may explain central cognition—that is, thought. Proponents of central cognition argue that the mind, in order to flexibly solve problems and reason, must possess a neutral workspace where thoughts from across the mental economy can be brought to bear on one another (Carruthers 2014). Fodor’s (1983) * Javier Gomez-Lavin [email protected]
1
The University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
Gomez-Lavin J.
isotropic mental architecture and Evans’ (1982) “generality constraint” mandating the inferential “promiscuity” of concepts are some of the most explicit formulations of this account of the mind, which stretches back and features in many prominent theories of cognition and agency.1 One might even argue that philosophers who make no mention of working memory are committed to something analogous. From neopragmatists like Brandom (2001) and McDowell (1996) who see human thought as playing out amongst an internal space of reasons, to the unified mentality of the Kantian rational agent (Korsgaard 2009), to Aristotle who, in De Anima, proposes that thought—in any form—cannot occur without a capacity, phantasia, to form and retain images from past experience (431a16; Aristotle and Ham
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