Depending on what mood I'm in, and/or who I'm talking to, I might describe myself as studying either philosophy of mind, or psychology, or cognitive science. So what's the difference? Whilst the terms are often used interchangeably, it seems to me that they each have a slightly variation in emphasis:
Philosophy of Mind: This covers the more traditional metaphysical questions regarding what the mind is, whether it's distinct from the physical, and so on. Up until the mid-20th century this was pretty much your only option. Of the three this is most likely to conduct 'armchair' philosophy, with no reference to empirical evidence.
Philosophy of Psychology: This focuses more on methodological questions about actual scientific practice within psychology, and might be regarded as a sub-discipline of philosophy of science. I would also include 'social cognition', at least as I've been taught it, within this category. Philosophy of psychology is, by necessity, closely engaged with ongoing psychological and neuroscientific research.
[Philosophy of] Cognitive Science: Here the 'philosophy of' prefix is arguably unnecessary, as cognitive science is essentially a fusion of linguistics, philosophy, and computer science. Since its genesis in the 1940s/50s this has become an increasingly dominant paradigm. It tends to focus on relatively fine-grained questions about the structure and instantiation of cognition, and attempts to replicate this in artificial intelligence. Historically cognitive science has tended to be committed to some form of the computational theory of mind, but with the advent of embodied cognition and anti-representationalism this has begun to change.
Now there's obviously a huge amount of overlap between these fields, and it's pretty much impossible to study them in isolation from one another (although some philosophers of mind certainly attempt to do this). Personally I favour the latter two at the moment, yet I believe that it is important to remain aware of the more fundamental issues investigated by classic philosophy of mind.
This is an extremely subjective and provisional analysis, so please let me know if you disagree with my categorisations!
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