The indispensability of laws in cognitive science

Endorsing the philosophical distinction between laws of science and laws of nature, the present paper advocates for the explanatory indispensability of the laws of science in the field of the cognitive sciences. It is argued here that laws of science play an indispensable epistemic role both for functional analyses and mechanistic explanations of cognitive capacities. In this way, the paper provides a plausible explication of the explanatory power of the cognitive sciences while wisely bracketing the controversial metaphysical status of natural laws. It is argued that both the advocates and the detractors of intentional causal laws presuppose that those laws contribute neither to functional nor mechanistic explanations of target phenomena. However, the present paper shows, first, that functional analysis requires the specification of non-causal, scientific laws, and second, that the precise scientific representation of the activities and the dynamical organization of some mechanism is generally deployed, in the context of a mechanistic model, by specifying scientific laws. The conclusion is that the laws of science (but not necessarily the laws of nature) play an indispensable role in cognitive scientific explanations.