Cognitive Approach to Model-Based Sciences

IntroductionIt seems cognitive sciences come to the extent that we can use them as a valuable cognitive source for the problems of philosophy of science. Cognitive sciences as an interdisciplinary course search for cognitive structures and processes which are occurred in individual actions of a scientist or a collection (s) of them. Cognitive sciences are used as a suitable source for cognitive approach of science since they pay attention to structural features and humanistic process. Models and scientists' choices, individually or in group, could be explained by using cognitive sciences. Beside, a cognitive approach in the study of science is a kind of naturalism in the philosophy of science, because the subjects of cognitive sciences are used for understanding the process of science and its production.Giere stipulates in the introduction of his book that cognitive sciences have a role for philosophy of science the same as the role of for logical positivists (Giere, 1992, p. xv). Of course, most of the philosophers do not accept this claim. Opponents believe that the idea of cognitive approach to philosophy is a recurrence to procedures of thought which it has been rejected at earlier decades of the twentieth century. Nonetheless, Russell and Frege changed the concept of logic as laws of thought and both of which, then, conversed to independent courses.Doing a detachment between the subjects of the people really think and they must think, context of justification and context of discovery of knowledge, by philosophical terms, are marked. So psychologism 1IiBS focused on the context of discovery of the knowledge and wants to know how people must think. Cognitive sciences being divided into cognitive neurosciences, cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence try to represent a set or a pattern of acquired knowledge called as a MODEL. Cognitive sciences presenting a model improve the possibility of reaching to a response (s) and solving the problems significant to philosophy of science by supplying a context of justification for it.Models are ideal structures which are used for the representation of the world through the resemblance relations between real world systems and models (Giere, 1988). It is the subject of research for more than fifty years.2 The central point of a model based science precisely goes back to the structures and its studying procedures. That is, understanding the relations between models, other related factors of science, particularly theories, data and analogy are attended (Giere, 1999).In fact the most important or at least one of the most important subjects in philosophy of science is the construction and formation of the theory. Main function of cognitive sciences, main functions of cognitive approach to philosophy of science and their related parts are discussed by three levels. The first is representation. By representation we try to show how and by what the scientists represent the world. We want to know, in general, what the scientific theories are. The second level looks for the discovery and conceptual changes. It means how scientists apply models and analogies to give a new representation of theories. And the last one includes the judgment. We want to know how scientists judge that one representation outranks than the other (s) (Giere, 2001).Analysis of Models used in aforementioned branches of cognitive sciences climbs the experimental to abstract level respectively. Neuroscience is an experimental branch while cognitive psychology uses either experimental or theoretical analysis, and artificial intelligence applies abstract form. Though, representation, conceptual changes and judgment in cognitive approach indicate that scientist, himself, or a group of them have fundamental roles in the construction, discovery, conceptual changes and judgment of scientific subjects. Therefore, philosophy of cognitive sciences, to reach to and explain the reality of the subjects of philosophy of sciences, calls for cognitive approach to sciences using cognitive models. …