Persons (including psychologists) not only feel, strive, and know, but also know

that they feel, strive, and know, and can anticipate further feeling, striving, and
knowing; they monitor and reflect upon their own experience, knowledge, and
mental functioning in past, present, and future tenses. (pp. 133–134)
6 DAI AND STERNBERG
As Kasparov (2003) pointed out, Deep Blue not only was unaware of the fact
it was playing a world champion, but had no self-awareness that it was winning
or losing. Such lack of self-awareness and consequent emotional reactions
would be potentially devastating for human players, because this crucial
piece of information would motivate adaptive strategic adjustment (e.g.,
to fight back).3
The failure to consider subjective experiences also creates blind spots such
as how a thinker’s values, attitudes, dispositions, self-understandings, and
beliefs guide his or her thinking. Because cognitivism focuses on the formal
or syntactic aspect of symbol manipulation (Smith, 2001), and neglects mental
or semantic contents of one’s directed consciousness or intentionality
(Searle, 2001), what gets obscured is the entire issue of how the culture, with
its rich historical legacy, enables our thinking through language and other
conceptual tools working seamlessly but potently in an intersubjective world,
without which most of what we call intellectual development is simply out of
the question (Gardner, 1985; see also D’Andrade, 1981, 1995, for a discussion
of differences between computer programs and cultural programs of
cognition). The very Kasparov phenomenon (or the phenomenon of Deep
Junior, for that matter) cannot be understood without the proper context of
cultural values, incentives, tools, and resources (including a body of the codified
chess knowledge, coaching, tournaments) supporting the development of
chess expertise.
The Trend Toward Integration
What we have witnessed since about 1990 is, to paraphrase Bruner’s (1994)
comments, a “renewed respect for a rather classical form of functionalism”
(p. 277) that tries to situate perception and cognition in a broader functional
context of human adaptation. Such a change logically calls for a more integrated
understanding of intellectual functioning and development. As Newell
(1988) pointed out, cognitive psychology started with elementary cognitive
processes, and only gradually shifted its focus to higher levels of purposive
behavior. Such a shift necessarily brings the whole person and functional
1. BEYOND COGNITIVISM 7
3
3There is a debate as to whether computational models are capable of derived
intentionality,
albeit the fact that it cannot produce real conscious experiences (e.g., Dennett,
1991; Searle,
1990). G. Matthews (personal communication, May 12, 2003) pointed out that
consciousness
and intentionality are beyond the computational metaphor, but many of the
functional attributes
of conscious states may not be. Our focus is how the human mind works. Whether
computational
models can simulate functional properties of mental states and acquire derived
intentionality is another question. To the extent Deep Junior does not have a
functional property
resembling human emotional reactions to an imminent loss or win, we can say the
system is not
embodied.
contexts to the forefront. Indeed, efforts for integrating motivation, emotion,
and cognition have been made by those pioneers of cognitive psychology
(e.g., Bruner, 1986; Norman, 1980; Simon, 1967, 1979, 1994). Yet, much remains
to be desired. Kintsch (1998) lamented that “an all too narrow focus
on cognition places intolerable restrictions on cognitive science” (p. 13). He
predicted that future progress would depend on the ability to reintegrate the
cognitive and emotional-motivational aspects of human behavior (see also
Bransford, Brown, & Cocking, 2000; Bruner, 1994; Gardner, 1985; Hilgard,
1980; Hoffman, 1986; Norman, 1980; Resnick, 1989; Shuell, 1996; Simon,
1994, for a similar position).
In the rest of this introduction, we provide an overview of different perspectives
on intellectual functioning and development, and highlight and preview
some of the issues discussed in the ensuing chapters. Specifically four
general perspectives are discussed: