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Cognitive Styles in Two Cognitive Sciences

Cognitive Styles in Two Cognitive Sciences James Myers (Lngmyers@ccu.edu.tw) Graduate Institute of Linguistics, National Chung Cheng University Minhsiung, Chiayi 62102 Taiwan Abstract Miller (1990) suggests that communication between linguistics and psychology is hampered for essentially cognitive reasons: linguists favor simplifying explanations while psychologists favor causal explanations. This paper reformulates this suggestion as three testable hypotheses. First, scientists vary in cognitive style from rationalist/nomological to empiricist/mechanistic. Second, linguistics is primarily a rationalist/nomological science, while psychology is primarily an empiricist/mechanistic one. Strikingly, even among nativists, linguistic and psychological research still contrast along the rationalist/empiricist dimension. Third, cognitive styles are relatively intractable, as suggested by empirical evidence that they are associated with intrinsic individual differences and by formal arguments that highlight their self- isolating nature. Keywords: philosophy of science; epistemology; linguistics; psychology; individual differences. Introduction Linguists and psychologists have often noted a persistent lack of mutual respect across their two disciplines (Johnson- Laird, 1987; Jackendoff, 1988; Miller, 1990; Carlson, 2003). Miller (1990, p. 321) ascribes this impasse to different ways of thinking, which we will call cognitive style: What is holding up the free flow of ideas back and forth between linguists and psychologists? For what it is worth, my own view is that linguists and psychologists subscribe to different theories of explanation. Linguists tend to accept simplifications as explanations. [...] For a psychologist, on the other hand, an explanation is something phrased in terms of cause and effect, antecedent and subsequent, stimulus and response. The present paper reformulates Miller's suggestion as the hypotheses in (1)-(3), then tests them. (1) Scientists vary in cognitive style from more rationalist and nomological to more empiricist and mechanistic. (2) Linguistics is primarily a rationalist/nomological science, while psychology is primarily an empiricist/mechanistic one. (3) Individual cognitive styles are relatively intractable. By cognitive style we mean to cover both one's personal epistemology (theory of knowledge) and one's metaphysics (theory of reality). Rationalist epistemology emphasizes the role of reason in attaining knowledge, while empiricism emphasizes the senses. A nomological metaphysics explains in terms of general laws, while a mechanistic explanation is expressed in terms of causal systems. The overarching notion explored in this paper is that individual scientists tend to lean towards rationalism or empiricism, and towards nomological or mechanistic explanations, and that these leanings are reflected in their chosen scientific (sub)disciplines. Thus we expect to see reliable tendencies at both the individual and discipline level, but exceptions are not impossible. Given the brevity of this paper and the ambitious nature of the hypotheses, this study cannot fully verify or falsify them. Obvious limitations include our focus on just two dimensions of scientific thinking (see, e.g., Hacking, 2002, for others), and the poorly understood relationship between individual and disciplinary styles (i.e., to what extent scientific styles are cognitive or social). Each hypothesis is taken up separately. Support comes from published research in linguistics, psychology, and the history and philosophy of science. Cognitive Styles across the Sciences Hypothesis (1) can be unpacked into three subhypotheses: (1a) Scientists vary from nomological to mechanistic. (1b) Scientists vary from rationalist to empiricist. (1c) Scientists in nomological sciences tend to be more rationalist, whereas those in mechanistic sciences tend to be more empiricist. Regarding (1a), physicists favor nomological explanations, seeking the axioms underlying nature (exemplified in the Euclid-inspired style of Newton's Principia). Philosophers of physics sometimes write as if all science is inherently nomological (e.g., Scheibe, 2001), but in fact, physicists are atypical: chemists, biologists, geologists and other scientists generally concentrate on uncovering causal mechanisms, not general laws. As a typical example of a mechanism, Machamer, Darden, & Craver (2000) cite the transmission of chemical signals across a synapse, which involves entities (neurons, neurotransmitters) and activities (the releasing and binding of chemicals) in events that begin, progress, and end in space and time. The ultimate reason for cross-disciplinary differences in explanatory metaphysics seems to be reality. The systems studied in fundamental physics are simple enough for simple laws to work well, and being fundamental, no lower- level causal explanation is possible. By contrast, chemical, biological, and geological phenomena merely need to be consistent with physics; historical contingences make them impossible to deduce from physics alone.