Post-materialist cognitive science: Is it viable?

Post-materialist cognitive science: Is it viable?

Matt Colborn, PhD

Dr. Matt Colborn argues that, by denying the objective reality of what appears to us as the physical world out there, materialist cognitive science renders its own metaphysical assumptions untenable. Only an idealist or nondualist metaphysical basis can render modern cognitive science internally consistent again.

In the book, Dennett articulates a central philosophical pillar of cognitive science. This is a rejection of ‘dualism’ or the ‘ghost in the machine’ and an embrace of functional, materialist, information-processing models of mind. Any understanding of the mind, according to Dennett, should be strictly empirical or third-person and ‘objective.’ Mind must be understood entirely as physical information processing that could in principle be reproduced in an AI or robot. Anything else is ‘giving up.’

For the remainder of this essay, I’m going to argue that this stance has become unviable. I’m also going to argue that the findings of cognitive science itself significantly undermine the strict materialism or physicalism of its founders. So, to briefly answer the essay title question, post-materialist cognitive science is not just viable, it is by now necessary.