Abstract: This article considers the opposition between the pluralist and unificationist stances in the philosophy of cognitive sciences. The choice between pluralism and unificationism is important both in terms of discussing the current methodological practices and with respect to the debates about the future of the cognitive studies. As a starting point, the author takes his own idea of theoretical complexes. One of its most significant normative consequences is theoretical pluralism. There have been a number of skeptical arguments against pluralism, including the fear of generating many useless theories and dissipating of efforts, as well as the doubts about the differences between pluralism and relativism. One of the most recent objections states that integrative pluralism implies a tension, an instability, if one prioritizes the epistemic quality of explanatory depth. The author addresses each of these objections in turn. The constructive variety of pluralism is distinguished from unbridled pluralism and relativism by its commitment to the idea of improving explanatory, predictive, and other characteristics of a theory through the presence of alternatives and their collisions, mutual criticisms. Integrative pluralism does not entail instability, since the values of unification and explanatory depth cannot be prescribed to the cognitive sciences ex cathedra, without taking into account the character of the cognitive process revealed in empirical studies. The pluralist stance appears to be incompatible with radical projects of unification of the cognitive studies, though there are many opportunities for more moderate integrative initiatives. One such initiative is the recent idea of integrative experiment design, which involves constructing a space of experiments for a particular problem. Testing theories by selectively sampling points in this space and then updating them accordingly may be a key to the integration of experimental observations.

Abstract: The article explores some possible ways of interaction between philosophy and the specific cognitive scientific disciplines: psychology, neurosciences, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and anthropology. The author draws on V.A. Lektorsky’s idea of the dialogue between philosophy and the cognitive sciences. Philosophy and the cognitive sciences engage in a productive dialogue in which their mutual enrichment, the strengthening or weakening of certain scientific or philosophical theories, and theoretical progress can occur. On the one hand, it is asserted that philosophy can have the greatest impact on the development of the cognitive sciences in the way of clarifying problems of the philosophy of science. These problems encompass the problem of the theoretical progress of cognitive studies, the problem of the nature of individual cognitivist theories (as well as the nature of groups of individual theories such as connectionism, predictive processing, etc.), the problem of the relationship of cognitive disciplines to each other, and more. In addition, philosophers can contribute to discussions concerning the foundations of the cognitive sciences and their key concepts of representation and computation. They can also play a significant role in assessing the ethical implications of the emergence of new cognitive technologies and neurotechnologies. On the other hand, the specific cognitive disciplines can provide new insights into traditional philosophical issues, like the problem of consciousness and the brain, the problem of free will, and enrich the philosophy of science with novel empirical data.