%A Daniel Dennett
%J Cognition, Conception, and Methodological Issues
%T Filling in versus finding out: A ubiquitous confusion in cognitive science
%X One of the things you learn if you read books and articles in (or about) cognitive science is that the brain does a lot of "filling in"--not filling in, but "filling in"--in scare quotes. My claim today will be that this way of talking is not a safe bit of shorthand, or an innocent bit of temporizing, but a source of deep confusion and error. The phenomena described in terms of "filling in" are real, surprising, and theoretically important, but it is a mistake to conceive of them as instances of something being filled in, for that vivid phrase always suggests too much--sometimes a little too much, but often a lot too much. Here are some examples (my boldface throughout).
%E Van den Broek Pick
%D 1992
%I American Psychological Association
%L cogprints267

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