Relation Between Philosophy and Cognitive Science: Reflection on Thagard’s Thought

Regarding Thagard’s viewpoint, the purpose of this paper is to verify the relation between philosophy and cognitive science. The mission of cognitive science is to understand how human mind works, but assigning mind studies to (cognitive) “science” once again has posed the reductionism approach to find out the nature of human mind. This article conceptually analyzes the Thagard’s approach to the role of philosophy in formation of the new field of mind study (cognitive science). Thagard argues that philosophy has two kinds of contribution to cognitive science. The general contribution is done by optimizing tenability of philosophical presumptions and methodologies of cognitive science that how and with what concept of explanation understand the functions of mind. According to Thagard’s point of view, cognitive science should explain the mechanism that leads to production of a phenomenon. This contribution reveals the state of interactions between different disciplines of cognitive science to create a new interdisciplinary field of study and understanding of the mind/brain function which, according to Wittgenstein’s viewpoint, should be studied. Cognitive science, in interaction between different fields, needs to create a new language game in which knowledge workers of these fields contribute to build new knowledge about mind/brain based on a common system of reference.