Cooper R, Shallice T
Department of Psychology, University College London, UK.
Cognition. 1995 May;55(2):115-49. doi: 10.1016/0010-0277(94)00644-z.
Despite the potential importance to cognitive psychology of unified theories no attempt has been made to assess concretely the methodological problems that such theorising produces. This paper addresses this issue of unified theorising, and in particular the arguments for unified theories put forward by Newell (1990). Close examination of these arguments reveals that Newell's approach does not adequately counter the difficulties which beset the grand theories of the 1930s, nor the problems of irrelevant specification which arise in modern computational psychological work. These difficulties do not prevent the development of unified theories, but they do pose serious problems, problems which it is argued can only be met by rigorous empirical testing together with extreme methodological sensitivity. The methodological concerns lead us to examine Soar, perhaps the most well-developed unified theory, from methodological, computational, and empirical perspectives. Our conclusions are that, whilst Soar represents an impressive body of research, its methodological foundations are insecure, it is ill specified as a computational/psychological theory, and under empirical testing it does not stand up to close scrutiny as a unified theory. The Soar research programme as it currently stands thus fails to meet the necessary methodological demands imposed by unified theorising.
尽管统一理论对认知心理学具有潜在的重要性，但尚未有人尝试具体评估此类理论化所产生的方法论问题。本文探讨了统一理论化这一问题，尤其关注纽厄尔（1990）提出的支持统一理论的论据。仔细审视这些论据会发现，纽厄尔的方法并未充分应对困扰20世纪30年代宏大理论的难题，也未能解决现代计算心理学工作中出现的无关规范问题。这些困难虽不妨碍统一理论的发展，但确实带来了严重问题，有人认为只有通过严格的实证检验以及极高的方法论敏感性才能解决这些问题。出于对方法论的关注，我们从方法论、计算和实证的角度审视了Soar，这可能是最完善的统一理论。我们的结论是，虽然Soar代表了大量令人印象深刻的研究，但它的方法论基础并不稳固，作为一种计算/心理学理论，其规范并不明确，在实证检验中，它作为统一理论也经不起严格审查。因此，目前的Soar研究计划未能满足统一理论化所提出的必要方法论要求。
