Much of experimental psychology and ACT-R models are models of rational cognition. Emotions and related drivers may form a second kind. Is social cognition, such as decisions to trust, distinct enough to be another? I'm trying not to go the a full listing of all possible flavors of cognition, but the top kinds. The question is also trying to avoid whether perception and the development of skilled action sequences are "cognition". I'm also trying to avoid the System 1 System 2 issue, presuming rational is mostly System 2, emotional is mostly System 1, but social?
Dualisms always fall into trialisms, in my experience. Descartes is a wonderful historical example. The trouble is that it never seems to stop. Once you permit one distinction, that makes the next so much less difficult, and then we're in a Weber's-law concern over the theory. Or at least I am. For my part, I don't like taking taxonomy as a premise for the explanation of cognitive behavior.
Developmental science is full of examples of how differentiation of form can arise from subtle fluctuations in in nearly-homogeneous (and definitely continuous) subtrates. Apparent modularity of behavior is no guarantee of modularity in the roots of behavior. A simpler story, perhaps, but not an easier one to generalize beyond the bounds of biological sciences.
Thank you. I see your point and share your concern about reductionism. I am attempting to suggest that when we think about cognition, it isn't only the rational, or only the rational plus emotional. I'm wondering if there's a reasonably accepted range of types of cognition without going all the way to Howard Gardner's 7 or 9? ... and the answer may be "no".
My own approach (or hope, really) is to search for more interesting sorts of cognition that don't suffer from the very real deficits you point out in the only-rational cognition.
I think the critical realist perspective here is that we often make theoretical distinctions in our research (and describe them with taxonomies) but that we should be aware that these taxonomic distinctions may not be (probably are not) ontological distinctions. So, while it's *convenient* to study something *complex* one dimension at a time---say, the rationality of cognition---it does not mean that understanding that dimension is to understand the complexity, itself. Is that what you're looking for, Bill?
I'd actually admit that things are a step more interesting than that, Clarence: Namely, systems can even act in ways that are modular-ish, separable-ish, and all that--including our tendency to class things. I just think that classing phenomena is not far enough past "stamp collecting" as we'd like to get to keep our cognitive science providing new insights.
The availability (and reality, even) of cognitive differences, scientifically or epistemologically, is fine with me (preferrable, I think), but I think the real fun for us comes from the possibility that taxonomies are rooted in hierarchical relationships that are not explicitly cognitive right off the bat.
I'd say no. What we call "social cognition" may be cognition applied to social stimuli or social tasks. An example would be the so called fusiform "face" area, that is involved in processing faces but also non-social stimuli. This being said, I believe that studying how cognition handles social stimuli/tasks can be very informative. It could also improve ecological validity, since much of cognition happens in social contexts.
Ion,
Nice, but isn't what your point out, the fusiform "face" area, evidence that we have developed specific functionalities to support social interaction. Then, isn't that therefore evidence of another potential grouping of cognitive functionality besides the rational and emotional?
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