Bold claim re: abandoning reverse engineering as a tactic in cognitive science

Various research initiatives try to utilize the operational principles of organisms and brains to develop alternative, biologically inspired computing paradigms and artificial cognitive systems. This paper reviews key features of the standard method applied to complexity in the cognitive and brain sciences, i.e. decompositional analysis or reverse engineering. The indisputable complexity of brain and mind raise the issue of whether they can be understood by applying the standard method. Actually, recent findings in the experimental and theoretical fields, question central assumptions and hypotheses made for reverse engineering. Using the modeling relation as analyzed by Robert Rosen, the scientific analysis method itself is made a subject of discussion. It is concluded that the fundamental assumption of cognitive science, i.e. complex cognitive systems can be analyzed, understood and duplicated by reverse engineering, must be abandoned. Implications for investigations of organisms and behavior as well as for engineering artificial cognitive systems are discussed.

http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.4896

Two points are emphasized in those research programs: First, there is impres- sive abundance of available experimental brain data, and second, we have the com- puting power to meet the enormous requirements to simulate a complex system like the brain. Given the improved scientific understanding of the operational principles of the brain as a complexly organized system, it should then be possible to build an operational, quantitative model of the brain. Tuning the model could be achieved then using the deluge of empirical data, due to the ever-improving experimental techniques of neuroscience. Trying to put this idea into practice, however, has generally produced disen- chantment after high initial hopes and hype.