ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE 251

Book Review and Response

A.I. Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition (Harvard University Press, Cam-

bridge, MA, 1986); ix + 437 pages, $27.50.

Reviewed by: Stephen W. Smoliar

USC Information Sciences Institute, Marina del Rey,
CA 90292-6695, U.S.A.

1. Overview
This book is best introduced by its author's very first paragraph:
The idea of this book germinated while I was a fellow at the Center
for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences during 1975-76,
with support from the Guggenheim Foundation. Conceived there
was the idea of epistemics: an enterprise linking traditional epis-
temology, first, with cognitive science and, second, with social
scientific and humanistic disciplines that explore the interpersonal
and cultural processes impinging on knowledge and belief. The
intention was to enrich epistemology while preserving its own
identity, This book articulates the first part of epistemics: the
relation between epistemology and cognitive science. A sequel is
planned to delineate the second part: social epistemics. (p. vii)
Epistemological issues have been a concern of Western philosophy at least as
far back as the Sophists [16]. Cognitive science, on the other hand, is still in its
childhood as an interdisciplinary pursuit which attempts to integrate the
resources of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, philosophy, and per-
haps other areas. Since cognitive scientists seem well aware of the potential
value of epistemology, Goldman's objective may be viewed as one of fair
exchange: it is now time for epistemology to begin to reap the benefits of
cognitive science.
It would be fair to say that Goldman does not regard himself as a cognitive
scientist. He is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Arizona; and, to
judge by his writing on philosophical issues, he is very comfortable in this
element. However, his personal agenda of inquiry has led him beyond the pale
of philosophical literature. In particular, he appears to have been profoundly
Artificial Intelligence 34 (1988) 251-267
0004-3702/88/$3.50 © 1988, Elsevier Science Publishers B.V. (North-Holland)
252 BOOK REVIEW

affected by the work of John Anderson which led up to The Architecture of

Cognition [2]. (Anderson's earlier book, Language, Memory, and Thought [1],
appeared in 1976; so it is likely that Goldman was exposed to Anderson's work
during his fellowship.) Other cognitive scientists have definitely left marks on
Goldman, but one gets the distinct impression that Goldman has selected
Anderson to play Virgil to his Dante.
Epistemology and Cognition is divided into two clearly distinct parts. The
first, called "Theoretical Foundations," may be regarded as an exposition of
the major issues of epistemology. In the second, "Assessing our Cognitive
Resources," Goldman ventures into most of the significant areas of cognitive
science: perception, memory, representation, reasoning (both deductive and
probabilistic), and belief updating. The approach to each of these topics is
basically the same: Goldman introduces the reader to key results from the
literature, generally doing his best to be fair to conflicting points of view; then
he attempts to review these results in terms of what they have to offer to
epistemology. These two parts will now be considered separately, after which it
will be possible to assess the book as a whole.

2. Epistemological Issues
The chapter titles for the first part of Epistemology and Cognition read
somewhat like a college catalog course description for a philosophy depart-
ment: "The Elements of Epistemology," "Skepticism, Knowledge," "Justifica-
tion: A Rule Framework," "Justification and Reliability," "Problem Solving,
Power, and Speed," "Truth and Realism," "The Problem of Content." Since it
is not the purpose of this review to assist in preparation for a final examination
in epistemology, I shall focus my attention on those two chapters which should
be of greatest interest to the artificial intelligence community: "Justification
and Reliability" and "Problem Solving, Power, and Speed."

2.1. Justification and reliability

For Goldman the key question of epistemology is: "How can one know
anything?" He begins by rejecting the skeptical approach that, indeed, one
cannot ever really know anything and then undertakes to develop an alterna-
tive which will hold up against traditional skeptical arguments. The basis for his
alternative is the following principle: "S's believing p at time t is justified if and
only if S's believing p at t is permitted by a right system of justificational rules
(J-rules)." (p. 59). Goldman quickly qualifies his stand by observing that this is
really only a "first-order" principle; and he demonstrates how it may be
subsequently refined to satisfy several potential objections. Nevertheless, this
simpler statement is sufficient to sustain his discussion through most of the
book.
The problem with this principle is that it basically punts the issue over to an
BOOK REVIEW 253

equally complex question: What constitutes "a right system of justificational

rules?" This is really the key issue of Goldman's book, because, ultimately, he
argues that any acceptable criteria for rightness must be psychological in
nature. Thus, when he turns to the phychological literature in the second part
of his book, his main concern is with what these results reveal about the
rightness of such justificational rules.
Why is psychology so appealing to Goldman? Essentially, he regards it as an
antidote for the inadequacies of formal logic. He is very firm in his conviction
that no correct justificational rule may be generated by logic. His argument
against logic is best summarized as follows:
It is widely assumed that logic deals with principles of good
reasoning. Logic is often characterized as the art of reasoning.
Unfortunately, such a billing is a bit of a sham. It isn't that logic
courses are not useful for good reasoning, it's just that there are no
well-established principles of good reasoning (good cognitive-state
transitions), and no satisfactory theory of how good reasoning is
related to formal logic. In short, there is not really a well-estab-
lished discipline of informal logic. If there is to be such a discipline,
I think it must be a branch of epistemology. But that is a subject
which has yet to have its foundations firmly established (which is
what I am trying to do here). The relations that would obtain
between this branch of epistemology and formal logic are in need of
delineation. They are not yet well understood. (p. 82)
Unfortunately, there is a bit of circularity in this approach. Goldman is
rejecting formal logic because it does not confront "informal" issues which are
psychological in nature. Thus, he turns to psychology as an alternative to
formal logic. Why did he even entertain the possibility of formal logic in the
first place? There are two possible answers to this question.
The first answer is that formal logic must be considered because it is part of
the Weltanschauung of "traditional epistemology." In other words, one cannot
address any question of epistemology without considering the role of formal
logic. Thus, Goldman cannot play the game by his own ground rules without
first making a case for rejecting previous ground rules. Unfortunately, he does
not make the case very well, since, ultimately, all he is saying is: "I reject the
old rules because they don't allow me to say what I want to say with my new
rules." Thus, while there is potential merit to his conclusion, he hasn't really
arrived at it through a path of sound reasoning.
The second answer is stylistic in nature. As an expository writer, Goldman is
inclined to account for as many points of view on an issue as he can muster.
Unfortunately, like a good comedian, he prefers to hold back on his punch
line. Thus, he tends to lead his reader down many garden paths before
revealing which of those paths actually contributes to the progress of his
254 BOOK REVIEW

argument; and in this particular case formal logic is just one of the possible
paths in his garden.
(It should be noted, however, that, in spite of the weakness of his argument,
Goldman has made an interesting point about formal and informal logic. His
primary difficulty seems to lie in a misunderstanding of what formal logic was
trying to formalize. If one considers that prior to formal logic there were
syllogisms, then formal logic has certainly done an admirable job of capturing
an appropriate set of abstractions for those syllogisms. However, Aristotle and
his followers offered no more insight as to how reasoning chooses the most
appropriate syllogism than formal logic does regarding the choice of an
inferential rule. No less a philosopher than Immanuel Kant was aware of this in
his preface to the second edition of his Critique of Pure Reason [6]:
The early success of logic must be attributed exclusively to the
narrowness of its field, in which abstraction may, or rather must, be
made of all the objects of cognition with their characteristic distinc-
tions, and in which the understanding has only to deal with itself
and with its own forms. It is, obviously, a much more difficult task
for reason to strike into the sure path of science, where it has to
deal not simply with itself, but with objects external to itself.
Hence, logic is properly only a propaedeutic--forms, as it were, the
vestibule of the sciences; and while it is necessary to enable us to
form a correct judgement with regard to the various branches of
knowledge, still the acquisition of real, substantive knowledge is to
be sought only in the sciences properly so called, that is, in the
objective sciences.
If such reasoning, which strikes "into the sure path of science," belongs within
the realm of epistemology, then perhaps we are due for the development of a
"mathematical epistemology" which will do for current epistemology what
mathematical logic did for logic based on syllogisms.)
To turn to Goldman's basic argument, the chief merit of the psychological
approach is that it allows one to assess justificational rules in terms of cognitive
states. Goldman regards belief as an activity which involves passing from one
cognitive state to another. Unfortunately, his view of the role played by
justificational rules regarding such transitions is far from clear. On the one
hand, he views the rules as guards" which allow certain transitions of cognitive
state and prohibit others. At the same time, he seems to want to be able to
view the rules as operators on a cognitive state, in which case they would
become the agents of transition.
Because Goldman never takes the trouble to lay down an ontological
foundation for his rules, such confusion is not surprising. One may assume that
his personal sense of the concept of a rule has been strongly influenced by
production rules, particularly as they have been applied in Anderson's work.
BOOK REVIEW 255

However, it is important to remember that cognitive science is only an

influence on Goldman. One cannot conclude that he has accepted or internal-
ized Anderson's (or any other cognitive scientist's) model of rules; so he does
his readers a disservice by not being clearer about his own such model.
Regardless of whether or not it is appropriate to think of justificational rules
as production rules, there remains the problem that "cognitive state" is a very
elusive concept; and Goldman never makes any serious effort to pin it down,
either through desiderata or in terms of a hypothesized definition which can be
subsequently criticized and refined. Whatever Goldman has to say on the
subject remains implicit in his discussion of justificational rules, which, in turn,
are characterized in terms of properties of cognitive state which are never
explicitly articulated. Thus, the reader is trapped in a vicious circle; and
unfortunately, later chapters, in both the first and second parts of this book,
never offer any viable means of escape.

2.2. Problem solving

The keystone of this chapter is Goldman's characterization of a problem. This
is posed in terms of what it means to say that an agent S has a problem Q; and,
by Goldman's definition, this situation holds if and only if the following four
criteria are satisfied:
(1) Q is a question.
(2) S wants to have a (true) answer to Q.
(3) S does not believe that he has a (true) answer to Q.
(4) S does not have a (true) answer to Q.

This is an interesting concoction which reflects an initial principle laid down by

Goldman concerning the threefold nature of propositions. For Goldman
propositions play three roles:

(1) contents of verbal assertions,

(2) contents of beliefs,
(3) bearers of truth.

All three of these roles are involved in the propositions which characterize a
problem.
Having established this foundation, Goldman turns to what he calls the
"cognitive components" of problem solving. Here he offers a list of pos-
sibilities, without showing much concern for either the completeness of the list
or the interactions among the list entries. His components are not terribly
surprising:

(1) hypothesis generation,

256 BOOK REVIEW

(2) test,
(3) doxastic decision,
(4) concept formation,
(5) pursuit.

The first two components are certainly an acceptable part of the artificial
intelligence view of problem solving. The third is, too, despite its lexical
trappings. (It is worth noting, as an aside, that Goldman really loves this word
"doxastic." Now my Merriam-Webster resources, the seventh Collegiate and
the third International were of no help to me here. Consequently, anything I
say about this word or about how Goldman uses it is based strictly on
inferences from his text.) Essentially, "doxastic decision" is what is done with
the result of a test; that is, it is the assignment of some (discrete or continuous)
level of belief to the hypothesis being tested. The final two components may be
regarded as "recta-components," since the first serves to extend the scope of
hypotheses which may be generated, while the second (in Goldman's sense) is
a control component which guides how hypotheses are generated, tested, and
evaluated.
Once these components are laid out, the discussion quickly begins to exhibit
the influence of cognitive science. The reader is swept through casual refer-
ences to the act of searching a problem space and digressions about the effect
of long-term memory in problem solving activities. This material is probably a
reflection upon the theory of problem solving developed by Allen Newell and
Herbert Simon in Human Problem Solving [12]; but Goldman fails to provide
either an exposition of the theory or an adequate citation. Furthermore, this
discussion is never related back to his initial characterization of a problem or
his list of cognitive components.
Another difficult issue which is confronted, but not particularly satisfactorily,
is that of what it means for something to be a question. Only the weakest
attempt is made to categorize questions, which means that, ultimately, Gold-
man has not been particularly enlightening as to what a problem really is. This
is an issue which has been relevant to artificial intelligence for as long as
artificial intelligence has been concerned with general problem solving; and
while the results which have emerged to date are far from conclusive, there is
definitely evidence for the case that a characterization of problems based on
questions is neither the only way to go nor necessarily the best one.
Indeed, the work pursued by Newell and Simon [12] is a major alternative to
such a characterization. In this case, a problem is represented in terms of
achieving a state of knowledge. Possible states of knowledge are delimited by a
problem space, one state of which serves as the initial state. A designated set of
operators is provided as the means by which one changes one's state of
knowledge. Thus, the solution of a problem is represented by a path through
this problem space, defined through the application of operators, which begins
BOOK REVIEW 257

at the initial state and ends at a solution or goal state. The issue of a question as
a distinct ontological entity is never introduced.
Yet another alternative is to characterize problems in terms of tasks to be
achieved. Thanks to George Polya's How to Solve It [13], we are now well
aware that such a characterization can be traced back to Pappus, who sought to
divide mathematics into problems to find and problems to prove. While it is
true that tasks of finding and proving may be reformulated in terms of
questions which would suit G o l d m a n , such a reformulation would miss a
fundamental point. This is the fact that tasks are achieved through actions and
that, ever since Pappus, there has been an approach to problem solving which
is concerned with how one plans and appropriate set of actions to achieve a
given task. Most recent achievements on this front include the abstract tasks of
William Clancey's HERACLES [3] and the primitive actions which William
Swartout and I are using in EES [18]. G o l d m a n ' s neglect of this alternative view
of problem solving is definitely a shortcoming on his part.

2.3. What philosophers do

The first part of Epistemology and Cognition may leave non-philosophers
wondering just what it is that philosophers do. It may come as a shock to some
that the very nature of the questions posed by philosophers tend to be quite
different from those posed by artificial intelligence. This exposition serves to
remind us that the emphasis of the humanities is on the human. G o l d m a n is
m o r e concerned with what makes "knowing" a human experience than he is
with how that experience might be modeled by a mechanism. (In A History of
Western Philosophy [16], Bertrand Russell described this state of affairs as " a n
undue emphasis on man as c o m p a r e d with the universe" and proclaimed it a
problem " e v e n in the best philosophy after D e m o c r i t u s . " )
Consequently, G o l d m a n shows much greater interest in teasing out the
subtleties of an issue than in hypothesizing a rough-cut model to confront that
issue and subsequently refining that model. H e would rather discuss why doing
the right thing for the wrong reason is not evidence of knowledge than consider
what might be going on when the brain does the right thing for the right
reason. This attitude can be very frustrating to anyone who fancies himself a
practitioner of artificial intelligence. However, it is probably also a valuable
exercise in humility to be experienced by any such practitioner who feels
satisfied with his most recent results. While it may be that m a n y of the
subtleties which provide grist for G o l d m a n ' s mill may never be considered as
relevant to the artificial intelligence community, some of them deserve to stick
in our collective craw. Thus, we would do well to devote some attention to
what philosophers have to say, even if, as a rule, they are not going to provide
many constructive guidelines for future research in artificial intelligence.
258 BOOK REVIEW

3. Issues for Cognitive Science

If the first part of Epistemology and Cognition provides an opportunity for
scientists to take a look at epistemology, the second part allows them to
observe how a philosopher observes science. The problem here is that, since
Goldman is not a practicing cognitive scientist, his perception is often narrower
than it should be and he is really not in a position to recognize this. It would be
better to judge him on the general trend of his argument, but often this trend
gets lost in the specifics of his examples. This review will focus on Goldman's
approach to four areas of cognitive inquiry: memory, representation, deductive
reasoning, and uncertainty.
It is in this part of the book that Goldman addresses the work of Anderson
most directly. It is therefore worth while to begin with a brief review of ACT,
the theory developed by Anderson in The Architecture of Cognition [2].
Fortunately, an excellent summary has been provided in this journal by Kurt
VanLehn in his review of this book [19]:
Anderson's basic line of argument for ACT has three steps. It
begins, like all scientific arguments, with an assumption. Ander-
son's assumption is that the mental architecture is some kind of
semantic net coupled, somehow, to some kind of production sys-
tem. The second step is to determine exactly what kind of semantic
net, production system, and coupling best characterize the human
mental architecture. An enormous collection of laboratory findings
are brought to bear in determining issues such as: Is the activation
that spreads through the semantic net a continuous quantity or a
binary marker? How fast does it spread? What are the conflict
resolution strategies of the production system? What portion of the
semantic net corresponds to the working memory of the production
system? Is there a higher-level organization in the semantic net,
e.g. frames or schemata? How are new chunks of semantic net
acquired?...
Step three in Anderson's argument concerns the acquisition of
complex skills, such as proving geometry theorems, coding LISP or
speaking a first language. ACT programs have been written that
learn complex skills, including the three just mentioned. The claim
of step three is that these programs are accurate simulations of
human complex skill acquisition.
Given this background, we may now turn to Goldman's contributions.

3.1. Memory
To a great extent, Goldman is more interested in the artifacts of Anderson's
research than the particular questions Anderson has investigated. Thus, in his
BOOK REVIEW 259

discussion of memory, Goldman is primarily concerned with the concept of

activation spreading through a semantic net. This model allows him to discuss
cognitive state as a collection of propositions which have been partitioned into
those which are activated and those which are unactivated. With this approach
he can refer to "what we know" in terms of the entire cognitive state while
"how we behave" is based only on our activated propositions. He seems
particularly concerned that one not dismiss certain behaviors as "irrational."
An example of such behavior would be going to the library at 7 AM (the
weekday opening hour) on a Sunday (when the library opens at 1 PM). As far
as Goldman is concerned, such behavior is rational if it is based on rational
deductions from activated propositions, which may happen to exclude the fact
that the day is Sunday or that the library has different hours on Sunday.
This example provides a good illustration of Goldman's priorities as a
philosopher. His primary concern is with whether or not this particular act of
absentmindedness should be judged as rational or irrational; or, to use the
epistemological vocabulary of the first part of this book, he wants to know
what justificational rules would justify the belief that the library opens at 7 AM
on a Sunday. Cognitive science, on the other hand, would tend to be less
concerned with a judgmental evaluation of this act than it would be with
hypothesizing and testing a model which would adequately explain such
behavior.
The rules which govern the behavior of such models conceivably could
assume the role of those justificational rules which are Goldman's primary
concern. Unfortunately, Goldman never says this explicitly. He appears not to
acknowledge the fundamental role which model building plays in cognitive
science. If all cognitive science has provided him is evidence of human
reasoning behavior, as opposed to guidelines for hypothesizing and testing
models of such behavior, then his interpretation of the subject may be rather
m i s g u i d e d . . , so misguided that he may have missed the very thing he is
looking for, a basis for the justification of belief.
Since Goldman would appear to have so much concern for the rationality of
absentmindedness, it is unfortunate that he has overlooked other cognitive
approaches to the phenomenon. In Induction: Processes of Inference, Learn-
ing, and Discovery [4], John Holland, Keith Holyoak, Richard Nisbett, and
Paul Thagard have proceeded beyond the basic concept of spreading activation
to a more specific consideration of how activations are distributed and amas-
sed. The result is a model which can account for the acquisition of beliefs, the
recall of acquired beliefs, and the forgetting of beliefs through lack of adequate
reinforcement. Since Goldman claims to have collaborated with Nisbett, it is
somewhat peculiar that he has overlooked this work. Another unfortunate
absence from Goldman's exposition is any reference to the work of Janet
Kolodner, whose memory model (in Retrieval and Organizational Strategies in
Conceptual Memory: A Computer Model [7]) was explicitly designed to
260 BOOK REVIEW

accommodate both remembering and forgetting. Indeed, Goldman has man-

aged to overlook almost all the contributions of Roger Schank and his
followers, a rather substantial sin of omission for one concerned with cognitive
science.
This returns one to the conclusion that Goldman is not particularly inter-
ested in cognitive models. What, then, does he hope to gain from cognitive
science? Apparently, his greatest interest is in evidence of human behavior
which will add weight to his stick for beating formal logic. If Goldman ever
realizes that such evidence is used by cognitive scientists for model building
and that the resulting models often share their material with formal logic (as
was observed by Drew McDermott in " A Temporal Logic for Reasoning about
Processes and Plans" [11]), he may find himself in a rather embarrassing
position.

3.2. Representation
The epistemological issue here is one of the effect of how we represent what
we know on what we actually know. Unfortunately, Goldman's knowledge of
possible resources for representation is rather slim. Consequently, the issue is
never confronted directly. Rather, it is sort of hinted at from the perspective of
particular topics of interest to the author.
Two of these topics are analogy and originality, and neither is handled very
well. Goldman seems concerned with whether analogy should be regarded as a
primitive or whether it can be analyzed in terms of other operators. He makes
a stab at considering analogy in terms of substitution, but he gets in over his
head very quickly. Once again, he should be faulted on unfamiliarity with the
literature, given the extensive work done by Robert Sternberg on a componen-
tial analysis of analogy [17].
Originality is the sort of topic one might expect a humanist to revel in.
However, this is not a realm which is new to artificial intelligence, as anyone
familiar with Douglas Lenat's work on AM and EURISKO [9] should know.
Alas, Goldman does not appear to be aware of this work; so we are left with
some interesting speculations which could have been more substantive had they
taken note of some concrete achievements to support them.

3.3. Deductive reasoning

Goldman's primary concern here is with the difference of opinion between the
"mental logic theory" of Lance Rips [14] and the work on mental models of
Philip Johnson-Laird [5]. These are two contrasting theories regarding how
human beings actually employ logical deduction in their reasoning processes.
The debate is an interesting one; but, for the most part, Goldman has drawn
his material from the available literature and seems to be too unfamiliar with
the issues to be able to take any stand of his own.
BOOK REVIEW 261

Once again, the question arises as to how this discussion is applicable to

issues of epistemology. This is one of Goldman's weakest areas. He emerges
from the logic-model debate with an abrupt pirouette to a traditional di-
chotomy in epistemology between "truths of reason" and "matters of fact."
This dichotomy turns out to be a straw man, raised in order to be dismissed as
"fundamentally misguided" in light of psychological results. Unfortunately,
how the results of either Rips or Johnson-Laird enter into this argument is
never made terribly clear.
An area of deductive reasoning which is totally overlooked is that of
reasoning with hypotheses. Given Goldman's concern for beliefs and how they
contribute to knowledge, one would have expected something about reasoning
in hypothesized belief spaces, regardless of whether or not those beliefs are
justified at the time the reasoning takes place. Such contextual reasoning is
actually a piece of an even broader epistemological issue which is never
confronted at all--imagination. This is an area which has been developed in
some of the research on mental models [5], since it may be represented in
terms of the manipulation of such models. It is another major sin of omission
on Goldman's part.

3.4. Acceptance and uncertainty

Perhaps the most interesting contribution which Goldman makes is in the area
of uncertainty. Here, he wishes to tackle the epistemological hypothesis that
belief can be regarded as a graded commodity, as opposed to one for which
there is an absolute binary value. He argues for the case that there is no
"middle-ground" as far as credal acceptance is concerned: " A person either
believes a proposition, or he doesn't." (p. 324).
What makes this discussion interesting is that Goldman draws his support
from connectionist models. For him the most important feature of a neural
network is its winner-take-all property. Thus, Goldman attaches great signifi-
cance to a connectionist model of the perception of the Necker cube which,
through mutual support and inhibition, will ultimately converge on one of two
possible interpretations [15]. Such a network has no graded belief concerning
those two interpretations; it settles on one or the other and "believes" it
absolutely.
Goldman extends this result to incorporate the belief of propositions as
follows:
Although doxastic uncertainty or indecision is more common here
than in the perceptual domain, there is a built-in preference for
finding "winners." Thus, contrary to what the standard subjective
probability model suggests, acceptance is a natural, highly prevalent
doxastic state, not a radical or pathological state, as judged by the
normal operating characteristics of the system. This idea was
262 BOOK REVIEW

anticipated by Peirce, who viewed uncertainty, or " d o u b t , " as an

"irritation" of which the system seeks to rid itself by replacing it
with belief. (p. 336)
Goldman should definitely be credited for attending to connectionist results.
While his understanding of the area does not run terribly deep, it is not
basically misguided. Perhaps this discussion provides the most convincing case
in the book for how results in cognitive science may contribute to areas of
inquiry among philosophers.

3.5. An epistemologist's view of cognitive science

This last point is particularly important. There is a tendency in both science
and technology for participants to be concerned with the perception of their
work only as it extends to a relatively narrow peer group. (All the worse, this
peer group is generally defined in terms of sources of funding and referees for
technical publications.) As far as cognitive science is concerned, Goldman is an
outsider looking in; and since his attitude is definitely not an aggressive one
(such as may be found elsewhere in the humanistic literature), he provides a
valuable mirror through which this still young discipline may view itself.
The most painful question which may arise in the course of an inquiry is:
What's the point? The deeper an investigation gets into the detailed minutiae
of its activities, the harder it becomes to recall what prompted that investiga-
tion in the first place. Ultimately, the investigation may descend into a realm of
self-gratification in which results seem to emerge more for the sake of keeping
graduate students supplied with theses than for the sake of advancing the
solution of a particular problem.
Goldman allows us to pull back from the immediacy of the most recent
published results. He reminds us that there are broad questions concerned with
belief, understanding, and knowledge which are long-standing puzzles of
philosophy. While he does not regard cognitive science as a panacea for these
problems, he finds that it offers a new point of view. After all, as a
philosopher, he, too, has to worry about satisfying his own narrow peer group;
and what he is saying to his peers is that they have been staring in the same
direction too intently for too long. Thus, for them the virtue of cognitive
science lies not in the answers it now provides, or may even provide in the very
near future, but in the way it allows philosophers to reconsider the questions
they have been asking and address alternative formulations.
Susanne Langer began Philosophy in a New Key [8] by observing:
. . . a philosophy is characterized more by the formulation of its
problems than by its solution of them. Its answers establish an
edifice of facts; but its questions make the frame in which its picture
of facts is plotted. They make more than the frame; they give the
BOOK REVIEW 263

angle of perspective, the palette, the style in which the picture is

drawn--everything except the subject. In our questions lie our
principles of analysis, and our answers may express whatever those
principles are able to yield.
Goldman is offering an "epistemology in a new key," in which he proposes to
introduce psychology among the principles of analysis. If this attempt at
reformulation leaves something to be desired as a consequence of Goldman's
own weaknesses in cognitive science, then Goldman still deserves credit for
being bold enough to take these first (albeit faltering) steps.

4. Assessment
From this one may conclude that Epistemology and Cognition is more a book
for philosophers than for cognitive scientists. Goldman certainly covers a lot of
epistemological ground, so that one may consider him as a source to learn
many basic topics in epistemology. Unfortunately, as a writer, he is not
inclined to reinforce the reader with summaries of his major points. Thus, one
gets the impression that he is writing to refresh the memories of those
philosophers who constitute his peer group, rather than to educate any
"outsiders" who wish to test the waters of epistemology.
On the cognitive science side, his background is definitely too narrow and
selective to satisfy most practitioners. However, one must never forget his
intentions. If he wishes to use cognitive science to shake the tree of epistemolo-
gy, he should probably be encouraged. It is good to know that philosophers are
thinking about such things (and, to judge from Goldman's notes, he is not
alone). This is definitely a positive interdisciplinary gesture. To use a favorite
expression of Warren McCulloch [10], Goldman knows better than to bite a
finger when he should look where it is pointing. One only wishes that his
presentational style could have been more accommodating to those outside his
immediate circle.

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264 BOOK REVIEW

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