Juan F. Franck and Ignacio Aguinalde, members of the “Brain and Person” project, participated in the XXVIII Conference on Epistemology and History of ScienceThe conference, which took place in La Falda (Córdoba) from October 9th to 11th, brings together researchers in the philosophy of science from across the country each year and provides an opportunity to stay informed about current research trends in Argentina. Ignacio Aguinalde's presentation, titled "The Origins of Cognitive Psychology in George Armitage Miller's Critique of Behaviorism," focused on overcoming behaviorism through a more humanistic anthropological perspective. Juan F. Franck presented a paper titled "Difficulties of the Emergentist Spectrum," in which he sought to highlight some theoretical obstacles to the concept of emergence in explaining the nature of consciousness.

Below you can read the abstracts of both presentations.

The origins of cognitive psychology in George Armitage Miller's critique of behaviorism – Ignacio Aguinalde

Currently, the cognitive approach undoubtedly constitutes the dominant paradigm in psychology. The incredible development achieved to date in the scientific fields of neuroscience, computational systems related to so-called "artificial intelligence," and linguistics—to name just a few of the most prominent areas—has prompted psychology to adopt a model of the psyche and behavior based primarily on the computer metaphor. This allowed us to overcome the narrow theoretical and methodological perspective that behaviorism had imposed until the mid-1950s, but it also raises the problem of discerning the difficulties of other types of reductionism. Therefore, given this surge in diverse cognitive models, it is necessary to examine their origins and the limitations they may present.

This paper is framed within a theoretical analysis of George Armitage Miller's critique of the behaviorist view, which was precisely what gave rise to the cognitive school of psychology. Miller is considered one of the founders of the cognitive school, and his thought represents a clear example of the intellectual journey of many researchers who abandoned the mechanistic framework of behaviorism upon realizing its inadequacy in explaining behavior. We will attempt to establish to what extent Miller's theory allowed us to overcome the reductionism of the behaviorist position and open the field of psychology to new ways of conceptualizing mental life. To this end, we will divide the exposition into three parts. First, we will outline the historical context of Miller's theory to understand both the essential tenets of the Watsonian behaviorist view he opposed and the immediate antecedents that influenced his own doctrine. Secondly, we will proceed to determine how behaviorism is overcome according to Miller's model, concentrating on the applications of information theory and neurology to psychology, especially in the study of memory, the process of recoding and in the notions of plan y hierarchy of behavior. From these applications we will try to show the fruitfulness of his proposal and evaluate in general the degree to which his application of concepts taken from computer science is appropriate in psychology, in order to achieve a balanced view of the contributions of this author.

Difficulties of the emergentist spectrum – Juan F. Franck

The use of the concept of emergence is as frequent as it is imprecise. Not only do emergentist theories lack a single, unequivocal concept of emergence, but it is also possible to trace a spectrum with opposing conceptions at its extremes. These range from emergent dualists to those who maintain that emergence occurs within a single process in a minimalist ontological framework of increasing complexity, which would also include consciousness. However, the entire emergentist spectrum should be able to explain the emergence of the emergent, in order to avoid the impression that it is something magical.