Contemporary Theoretical Issues in Cognitive Science: An Investigation Based on the Concept of “Language”

This article is the result of collective work aimed at understanding how research on language conducted across several disciplines (linguistics, cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, neuroscience, developmental robotics, and philosophy) fits within the cognitive sciences. The contributions of each author do not constitute an exhaustive overview, but have made it possible to identify several trends at work in the cognitive sciences of language: (a) the hyperspecialization of researchers in the cognitive sciences tends to weaken dialogue and confrontation between disciplines and theoretical frameworks; (b) the cognitive sciences of language are characterized by the development of embodied, situated, and distributed approaches, which challenge formal approaches; (c) the rise of artificial cognition makes it necessary to clearly distinguish between a computational model and a cognitive explanation. These three trends are hypotheses identified by the contributors at the end of this work: their validity and relevance will be tested in future interdisciplinary research.