The "Kantian Integration Approach" In Cognitive Science

The "top-down" and "bottom-up" approaches in cognitive science have their own advantages and difficulties,and their ideological roots can be traced back to the rationalism and empiricism in the history of western modern philosophy.This comparability is not a kind of rote or patching up,but comes from the common concern of cognitive science and philosophy for the same subject--human cognition--which are different abstractions of the same phenomenon.But in the current coping schemes which has emerged to deal with the difficulties mentioned above,the use of history of philosophy--especially Kant's philosophical resources--have been underestimated.Therefore the integration scheme of the"top-down" and "bottom-up" approach developed by Kant become treasures that has not been fully excavated.It may bring great enlightenment and inspiration on the philosophical level to researchers in cognitive science.On the other hand,throughout the history of philosophy,we can see that scientific research can often promote the development of philosophy,so the study of the combination of history of philosophy and cognitive science can also bring new perspectives and ideas for classical philosophy.As an interdisciplinary study of the history of philosophy and cognitive science,this thesis tries to do the following work:First,illustrate the philosophical roots and difficulties of the representatives of the "top-down" and "bottom-up" approaches in cognitive science,namely,symbolism and connectionism.And explain why we need an approach which is "an integration of the top-down and the bottom-up approach" that combines the advantages of both and avoids the disadvantages of both.Then we found that Kant's philosophy is likely to provide valuable ideological resources for this train of thought.Meanwhile,the recent emerging approach in cognitive science which called Predictive Processing(PP)has shown some relevant characteristics and is worthy of further study.Second,demonstrate that the PP approach in cognitive science has the undertone of Kant's philosophy,in other words,demonstrate a Kantian interpretation of PP.This is not only reflected in the methodology,but also in the corresponding basic elements,and has a clear line of thought in the intellectual history.On this basis,this thesis will demonstrate that PP also conforms to the idea of "Kantian integration approach" on how to construct the cognitive model that can show "an integration of the top-down and the bottom-up approach".Thirdly,based on the potential of the Kantian interpretation of PP in constructing the cognitive model of "an integration of the top-down and the bottom-up approach",this thesis will examine the philosophical criticism it has encountered so far,in order to show the scope of philosophical topics that the Kantian interpretation of PP may cover.By analyzing the criticism,this thesis found that some of these criticism can be respond by making use of Kant's philosophy(such as the distinction between the transcendental idealism and transcendental realism,transcendental deduction,etc.),while others need to put PP and its background in some general theme in the philosophy of cognitive science(such as inference and representation,etc.),this two kinds of responses,will be the possible direction of further research in the future.