Talk:Cognitive science

******VOTING NOW OPEN******

We are looking for a final round of voting before making a decisive move to change the definition of cognitive science. See the last heading on this discussion page, under the title: "Current definition too narrow? Part #2" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Cognitive_science#Current_definition_too_narrow.3F_Part_.23_2) Thanks. --  SKY_child  15:48, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Discussion 2003-2004

The article may be right that certain topics are "frequently de-emphasized or excluded outright" from cognitive science. The article was incorrect, however, in claiming that "connectionism", "nonsymbolic or nonpropositional AI", and "non-mathematical problem solving" are less than mainstream topics. This may have been true in past decades, but these particular topics are now quite mainstream. I've this deleted these three from the list of neglected topics. --Ryguasu 11:18, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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I've deleted the italicized bit in the following claim:

Still, there is much disagreement about the exact relationship between cognitive science and other fields, and the inter-disciplinary nature of cognitive science is largely both unrealized and circumscribed (for example, it is hard to imagine much useful issue from a relationship with linguistics which does not take up a Chomskyan program.)

This is simply not a helpful statement without clarifying what part of Chomsky is so essential here. It is quite easy, for example, to imagine a relationship with linguists who do not subscribe to, say, Chomsky's old government and binding theory ("GB") or his new "minimalist program".

--Ryguasu 11:18, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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I've removed the following passage, because it now seems redundant:

It should again be realized that the interdisciplinary scope of cognitive science does not extend into all areas which are concerned with the nature and operation of the mind (nor should it), though a broader perspective is always possible.

Note, though, that the italicized portion is strange; if many people define cognitive science as the study of the mind, then what good comes from claiming that the field need not consider "all areas concerned with the nature and operation of the mind"? What areas are less important?

--Ryguasu 11:18, 1 Sep 2003 (UTC)

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There needs to be much more on the theory of measurement and foundations of measurement here - this is actually the link between the basic work on cognitive psych by say Tversky/Kahneman, and the current work on phil of math by Lakoff/Nunez. Without a paragraph on this, it's hard to see how these are linked.

Trolls would add it, but, trolls keep correcting stuff, and sysops vandalize it back to being wrong. So, from now on, you will have to fix such stuff yourself.

Trolls will keep pointing it out on talk pages mostly.

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Has anyone else have a copy of the MIT encyclopeda of cognitive sciences? Pulling some ideas on how to organize this article may help, as well as some of the broad issues with it. I will take a look and make some recommendations.

ShaunMacPherson

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One of the most universally affirmed ideas of cognitive science is the importance of the unconscious mind;

This is just wrong. I am an undergrad majoring in cognitive science, and we don't even discuss the unconscious mind as a topic. This statement misleads the reader into thinking that the concept of the unconscious mind is central to cognitive science. Moreover, isn't the conscious/unconscious dichotomy passe?

Also, I'm pretty sure most cognitive scientists don't believe in the Mind/Brain Identity theory, but rather a form of functionalism.

(25 Feb 2004)

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There are two schools of Cognitive Science:

1st Generation Cognitive Science, founded in the teachings of ancient greece and the western philosophical tradition 2nd Generation Cognitive, founded as a rejection of the a priori philosophical assumptions that make up the western philosophical tradition, and that are being proven by science to be incorrect.

2nd Gen CS is backed up by a lot of neuroscience and psychological research. 1st Gen CS is essentially mystical mumbo jumbo. It is important that a distinction is made. I recommend reading "philosophy in the flesh by Lakoff and Johnson"

Then maybe we should make a disambiguation page? (Even though some aspect of 1st Gen CS is mentioned in the article, under the heading Cognitive science?)

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The history section needs to be fixed or dropped totally. Although it is good to have this perspective, I really have to admit that Plato's theory of knowledge (involving the soul's ability to recollection mathematical forms, etc.) is really pretty far removed from PDP connectionists models or tests designed to measure the recency effect in recall/recognition tasks, and so on. You can basically drop a name like Aristotle in the history of almost any field of study alive today and likely would not be far off. He was prolific and founded a lot. The problem is relevance. At some point you have to draw the line and say enough is enough. Cog Sci is (unapologetically) a very 20th/21st century multi-disciplinarian creature. We should annex it from Plato's Theory of Forms. That said, I don't think you can delete Descartes entirely and certainly not the Skinner/Chomsky saga. I'll let others figure this out but yah the History section is definitely bit of an exercise in half-baked, semi-relevancies. Skychildandsonofthesun (talk) 08:01, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

I still strongly agree that although Plato is certainly relevant to almost every modern writer, Plato's Meno should not be given the "foundational" credit for cognitive science in first sentence of the History section. --  SKY_child  17:18, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I was able to re-write the first paragraph of the history section so that it includes more information but is also more clear on the issue of the influencers and pre-history of Cognitive Science. I think this pretty good but please make any changes / give me feedback here. What I wrote as of 1:20pm January 16, 2010 is:

Cognitive science has a pre-history traceable back to ancient Greek philosophical texts (see Plato's Meno); and certainly must include writers such as Descartes, Benedict de Spinoza, Nicolas Malebranche, Pierre Cabanis. But, although these early writers contributed greatly to the philosophical discovery of mind and this would ultimately lead to the development of psychology, they were working with an entirely different set of tools and core concepts than those of the cognitive scientist. --  SKY_child  18:19, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Maggie Boden

I changed her name to 'Margaret' because that's the name she uses in articles and books.

Introduction text & balance

I changed the introduction with regards to the disciplines mentioned and their order. I deleted the 'especially neural networks' comment because cognitive science still draws a lot of inspiration from AI work that's based on other paradigms (cf. some GOFAI in language processing, Bayesian networks), and it's not necessary to make a division in the introduction. I also deleted philosophy of mathematics and philosophy of science because both seem of minor importance to me compared with philosophy of mind (philosophy of language could easily go in that list, and then you would have no less than 4 subfields). I added logic; how succesful logical methods are is disputed, but logic is nonetheless very important in the development of cognitive science. I also rearranged the order from what I thought most important to least important; this is of course controversial and highly subjective, and I'm open for suggestions. It might be more natural to stick related fields together.
As for the article, it covers the most important topics but it's very clear that it's written by people with different perspectives. Maybe we could work to make it more coherent, removing both symbolicist as well as embedded biases. It also needs expansion, I intend to add some to the AI section, and maybe to the linguistic section. Junes 15:11, 28 Feb 2005 (UTC)

added names

Popper and Eccles, for The Self and It's Brain, and Knowledge and the Mind-Body Problem.

Hayek, for The Sensory Order

In the case of Hayek, Virginia Postrel quotes Pinker in an article in the Boston Globe: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2004/01/11/friedrich_the_great/

Hayek's 1952 book, "The Sensory Order," often considered his most difficult work, foreshadowed theories of cognitive science developed decades later. "Hayek posited spontaneous order in the brain arising out of distributed networks of simple units (neurons) exchanging local signals," says Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker. "Hayek was way ahead of his time in pushing this idea. It became popular in cognitive science, beginning in the mid-1980s, under the names `connectionism' and `parallel distributed processing.' Remarkably, Hayek is never cited."

--Parker Whittle 22:17, 30 May 2005 (UTC)

Shockingly bad

I wonder if it is really worth trying to make this article better by making small changes, as some have tried to do. The organization is extremely bad, as is most of the actual content. It might actually be more productive to start from scratch. -- unsigned by 132.239.215.94 (talk · contribs) 13:50, June 17, 2005 (UTC)

Universalist Tendency

What in the world does Universalist Tendency have to do with cogsci? It should be removed.

Neutrality of the linguistics section

I find the discussion of linguistics less than neutral. The discussion of what is (incorrectly) referred to as "Chomskyan psycholinguistics" is also inadequate and incorrect. It focuses on one method of data-collection, and says little about the content of the overall approach. Being a researcher in the field, I find the statement that "[a]s of today cognitive linguistics is considered a proper cognitive approach to language rather than Chomsky's" hard to understand. If by "Chomskyan psycholinguistics" the author means generative grammar, the claim is certainly wrong, as the latter is a vivid field of intense research. I will remove the statement I quoted and try to describe generative grammar in a way that better fits my own impressions. I also find that functional-cognitive linguistics is definded negatively, in terms of what the author dislikes about generative grammar. Please compare the edits to verify that my changes improve neutrality and accuracy.--Neither 3 July 2005 18:31 (UTC)

I've renamed the section and added a link to theoretical linguistics primarily because issues of cognition original from, and are still quite importantly investigated in, the theoretical domains. Chomsky, as well as others, maintain quite strongly that by studying the theoretical nature of (knowledge of) language, and asking what characterizes possible human languages as a whole as separate from impossible human languages, that we're in a very real sense discovering what is a possible human mind. The overall section on language/linguistics-as-cogsci feels bit disjointed tho. I'm going to try to fix it up, if I have time. --Augur (talk) 18:13, 8 February 2010 (UTC)

Rewrite

I've given this page a much-need reorganization and rewrite of major sections. Major changes include: (1) addition of a section of "principles of cognitive science" with an overview of levels of analysis, (2) a section on areas of research, (3) an improved section on experimental methods, and (4) I cleaned up misc. lists of things with no prose and fixed the headers so they line up appropriately now. I think there is still a lot more that can be done. Thoughts? --Dzou 24 Sept 2005 21:55 (UTC)

WTF?

I haven't checked this page out in about a month, but when I did I noticed that someone had really ruined an excellent template for a general information page on cognitive science. I would like to understand why someone removed the list of institutions that promote cognitive science as well as a list of cognitive scientists. This is information that I know I would want to learn about if I were uninformed of the field. Also, the introduction was changed to some "cognitive science studies the brain" propaganda. There was also some misleading garbage about functionalism which, at best, could have been placed in the "History" section. What's up with removing the dynamic systems section? It seems that the latest page, before I reverted to an almagamation of work by wikipedians, was highly opinionated and biased. Be conservative with edits, don't go f*%#ing up other people's work.

I made some of the changes you are talking about, but I'm glad you removed some other people's edits. I was responsible for moving the lists of things to their own pages. The general policy on Wikipedia is to avoid having lists of things in articles. See Wikipedia:Lists (embedded lists). From that page: "As a basic principle, you should avoid list-making in entries. Wikipedia is not a list repository." So, that was my reasoning for moving the lists to their own pages.

As far as "cognitive science studies the brain" goes, I would say that a big part of cog sci is concerned with how the brain works and relating brain and behavior. All of cognitive neuroscience, for example. Imaging methods and studies all make reference to the brain. I kind of agree with you about removing the functionalism stuff. I'm a little confused though. Functionalism says that you can study cognitive events without making reference to the brain. Do you disagree with this? If so, wouldn't you agree that cognitive science necessarily studies the brain?

I think we need a stronger definition of what cognitive science is to start with, and then we can figure out the best way this article should be written. To that end, I looked up the definition in several cognitive science text books:

"Cognitive science is the study of human intelligence in all its forms, from perception and action to language and reasoning." Gleitman and Liberman, Invitation to Cognitive Science

"Cognitive science is the study of intelligence and intelligent systems, with particular reference to intelligent behavior as computation." Posner, Foundations of Cognitive Science

"Cognitive science is the multidisciplinary scientific study of cognition and its role in intelligent agency. It examines what cognition is, what it does, and how it works." Bechtel and Graham, A Companion to Cognitive Science

"Cognitive science is the study of mental representations and computations and of the physical systems that support those processes." Martin and Rumelhart, Cognitive Science

Based on this, and what we already have in the intro, I propose this intro section as being more refined than what we currently have:

Cognitive science is the scientific study of the mind and the computational processes that give rise to intelligence (e.g. Luger, 1994; Bly & Rumelhart, 1999). Intelligence includes the processes of perception and action, learning, language processing, and reasoning, as well as many others. Cognitive science views these computations as forms of information processing and seeks to understand the relationship between information processing, behavior, and the physical systems that implement these processes.

Cognitive science is highly interdisciplinary; it is often said to consist of, take part in, and collaborate with psychology (especially cognitive psychology), computer science (especially artificial intelligence), linguistics and psycholinguistics, philosophy (especially philosophy of mind), neuroscience, logic, robotics, anthropology and biology (including biomechanics).

What do other people think?

--dzou 22:45, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

Re: Changes

Lists, real quick. I did not see any clear links to these pages you created, and even after searching I made a conclusion that you just removed them. You are right about the list policy -- I didn't make the list, but I feel like it is a damn good resource to have. I appreciate such information, and what is an encyclopedia if not a reference on a topic? If anything, you could go through and make brief paragraphs on each of the people/institutions and then say "this is a stub" or whatever you want to call it. The important thing is that we preserve the information we already have and reorganize it somehow, not just remove it so no one will see it again.

Sorry if the pages I made weren't clearly marked. If anyone wants to move the lists back to their own pages, the ones I created before are List of cognitive scientists and List of institutions granting degrees in cognitive science. The second one is really long-winded, and if anyone can come up with a shorter name, that would be wonderful.

a big part of cog sci is concerned with how the brain works and relating brain and behavior. I agree, but that does not define Cognitive Science.

Agreed. I think that's reflected in my new definition.

"Cognitive science is the study of mental representations and computations and of the physical systems that support those processes." Martin and Rumelhart This is certainly biased since it is using the term computation. Cognition is not necessarily computed, and even if you were to defend the use of such a term, most people have a biased view of computation as if it were only digital. Who said the brain is digital?

The idea of computation is pretty central to the whole information processing approach that cognitive science is based on. Information processing is a form of computation, and the field is based on the idea that mental "things" can be studied in these terms.

Cognitive science is the scientific study of the mind and the computational processes that give rise to intelligence (e.g. Luger, 1994; Bly & Rumelhart, 1999). This referencing doesn't make sense. It sounds like Lugar is supporting computational processes, too. Did he? If you are a PhD student you should be aware of these things.

You're right the referencing doesn't make sense. None of the definitions, including Luger's, completely agree with each other. That said, I think it's important to have a definition that everyone in the field would agree with. If there are cognitive scientists out there that think computation isn't the right way to study the mind, that's fine; I don't really know if that is the case. Here is my proposed revised definition of cognitive science:

Cognitive science is the scientific study of the mind and the processes that give rise to intelligence (e.g. Luger, 1994). Intelligence includes the processes of perception and action, learning, language processing, and reasoning, as well as many others. Cognitive science typically views these processes as computations in terms of information processing and seeks to understand the relationship between information processing, behavior, and the physical systems that implement these processes.

Sure you should look for other opinions since this is only my view. Take care!

You and I seem to be the only ones talking about it at the moment. Hello other Wikipedians? --dzou 16:48, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I will attempt to throw in my two cents (maybe one cent) here. It seems to me that if "computation" is defined in the sense of "effective computation" (in the Church-Turing sense), then this definition excludes approaches that consider nondeterminism and its potential to give rise to "insight" (a la Penrose & Hammeroff, e.g.). --flyboy

Categorization

I removed Pinker from "Lingustics" to "Psychology". It sometimes happens that Pinker is referred to as a linguist, because of his popular book "The Language Instinct", but that is essentially wrong. Pinker's research is on the psychology of language, and not on linguistics per se. 19:09, 11 January 2006

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Symbolic model

Can anyone explain what is the symbolic model? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 132.205.103.196 (talk)

Different

It is interesting how very different this topic looks in the different language versions, such as the french, german and swedish articles on this topic.DanielDemaret 23:07, 8 April 2006 (UTC)

Cognitive Science: the Term

shouldn't the part concening the term either be worked into the first - historical - paragraph or should even better the article get an autonomous paragraph which focusses on the history of the term itself at the top? anyway - where was that 'first entry' in 1586? --cousin — Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.44.170.86 (talk) 21:08, May 17, 2006 (UTC)

I feel this entire page needs to be overhauled. About the only quality part is the introductory paragraph, and even that is a bit confusing since Artificial Intelligence is within the realm of Computer Science. Dan 06:01, 15 June 2006 (UTC)

Illustration

What is up with the illustration? The man and the robot with the brain don't seem directly applicable to anything. Is there a picture of a brain without the cartoon embellishments? Alex Dodge 18:53, 19 September 2006 (UTC)

I completely agree. The illustration is distracting, huge on the page and I don't see what it has to do with cog sci. It does not improve the article in any way.--Gloriamarie 01:23, 2 May 2007 (UTC)

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The current illustration is awful. This is an article about cognitive science. That illustration does nothing to illustrate what cognitive science is. If there is no rational opposition, I would like to remove that illustration soon. Alanasings (talk) 19:36, 11 August 2009 (UTC)

--- I changed it with a little copy and paste job. Help welcome with graphics design... --Andy Fugard (talk) 14:17, 26 December 2009 (UTC)

Language Processing

"How are humans able to understand novel sentences they have never heard before?" How are computers able to understand commands they have never knew before? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Auhsoj05 (talk • contribs) 11:40, July 25, 2007

Qualia

There has been a little bit of debate about whether qualia should even be mentioned on a cog sci page at all, and here's my point about why i believe it should be mentioned:

1) the very existence of qualia, with its introspective (how else?) analysis method, is a philosophical matter and is a topic of debate to this day (this is especially difficult because of the nuances that "existence" has depending on the school of thought); the fact that the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy has a dedicated entry on qualia should be a reliable evidence for this assertion.

2) the fact that the field of cog sci includes philosophical approaches is mentioned in a number of reliable sources, e.g. on the acm.org web site. The AAAI web site also has on its cog sci entry page a reference to another article which essentially says the same.

Given the above, and given the fact that an encyclopedic article on an issue is supposed to mention all kinds of relationships between said issue and "the rest of the world" based on what the article author believes is relevant (i.e. not strictly "inclusion" relationships), i considered it a good idea to mention in this article that, despite qualia being so intimately related to the (introspective) study of the mind, it is often completely avoided (or only briefly mentioned) in the bulk of cog sci research.

The bottom line is that i believe it's good to have a little sentence which essentially says: did you come to this page thinking that cog sci deals with just about everything related to the study of the mind? well, okay, qualia is indeed related to the study of the mind, but please click on the qualia link if you're interested in this because, despite what you might intuitively think, qualia are not usually dealt with in the context of cog sci. The "despite what you might intuitively think" is the key to why i believe qualia should be just mentioned here. Gyll (talk) 21:27, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Hmmm. I think it needs a reference for relevance and that it's not included, though. To do otherwise would be doing your own research; a good thing, in general, but not considered good on Wikipedia. — Arthur Rubin | (talk) 22:30, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

Well, i'm not sure what kind of relevance you are talking about... If you mean that qualia is indeed relevant to, and a topic of, cog sci, i believe i already provided plenty ( here is another example, see title). If you mean that qualia's status within cog sci is disputed (is it, isn't it, how much is it cog sci), there are quite a number of articles that will point to this conclusion (e.g. this article tries a clarification while admitting the jury is still out on the topic, this one tries to refute qualia altogether, etc). The idea is that qualia are a subject of study in cog sci, but most studies simply tries to refute the whole concept. Nonetheless, the concept is there and articles are written on it, which i believe grants it the right to be mentioned on the cog sci page.

Please do look a little bit on the (i believe) last issue that needs to be settled here, i.e. whether qualia are maintream cog sci or just a marginal topic, and i believe you'll be satisfied with removing the tags applied to that sentence. If you can find a reference-class reliable source stating black on white something like "the consensus in the cog sci community is that qualia are marginal to cog sci" it would be great, but i didn't find it stated that way yet (this is why i'm using the word "often" instead of making a stronger assertion in my sentence).

Note: there's also another thing to mention here: one cannot ask for every single sentence that an author writes in an article to be backed by a hyperlink. An article is a compilation of knowledge, and "quoting reliable sources" is an idiom that needs a lot of care and attention in order to not be abused. I also strongly believe wikipedia should be a reliable source itself, but please let's have the due flexibility when implementing general rules such as "quoting reliable sources". Otherwise, why not ask for a "reliable source" for every sentence written in the article (including e.g. "emotions are frequently de-emphasized in cog sci", etc).

Conclusion: If you disagree with the fact that quaila is not a mainstream topic in cog sci, or you believe this conclusion falls too close "personal research" (which i reluctantly have to admit, because after all it's my reasoning), then i can change the sentence to just include qualia as a cog sci topic, without mentioning the fact that it's not mainstream, but i believe i provided enough evidence for the fact that, marginal or not, qualia is indeed a topic in cog sci. Please let me know how you think it would be best to have that sentence: with or without saying it's not mainstream. Gyll (talk) 10:29, 16 January 2008 (UTC)

Hi Arthur, i see that you removed the "dubious" tag but still left "neutrality disputed" and "citation required". If you are satisfied that qualia are indeed a subject of study within the cog sci scholar community, how could i make it as a "quotation" the fact that a preeminent encyclopedia, the Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Jan 2008 online edition) considers both "qualia" and "cognitive sciences" withing its scope and hosts full-size articles on both of them, but the cog sci article does not mention qualia, and the qualia article does not mention cog sci? This is after all a highly respected source that does not consider qualia to be mainstream within cog sci, but how should i quote that? Please help me with either a suggestion, or maybe you can try fixing this yourself if you can (it's a pittly to leave those tags inside the article, it just looks... ugly). Gyll (talk) 16:10, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Okay, i found my way through the maze, done!!! I also rephrased the sentence to more accurately reflect the matter and better fit in the context. Gyll (talk) 16:35, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Manzo

I removed the following paragraph from the #Learning and development section, as I cannot find any sources that Manzo and ReQuest are significant. I'm sure the cognitive apprenticeship article says nothing about it. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 22:12, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

A significant step was made in cognitive science in 1968 when Anthony V. Manzo was able to demonstrate that reading comprehension could be dramatically improved through mental modeling, also known as cognitive apprenticeship training. Previously reading comprehension was believed to be a best predictor of Intelligence, and therefore nearly immutable. The research methodology was based on a teaching practice known as the ReQuest Procedure. <ref name=Manzo>Manzo, A.V., (1969) ReQuest: a method for improving reading comprehension through reciprocal questioning. Journal of Reading, 13, 123-126.</ref>

"Associative properties of the human brain"

Anybody know in what way "associative" is being used in this quote from the article?

The first is focused on abstract mental functions of an intelligent mind and operates using symbols, and the second, which follows the neural and associative properties of the human brain, and is called subsymbolic.

--Ty580 (talk) 09:47, 21 April 2008 (UTC)

columns-list 3 on the see also

2 or 3 or 4 ! :) Emesee (talk) 22:13, 12 September 2008 (UTC)

Why is a Giant Mutated Monkey Brain Rendering picture at the top of a Cognitive Science article??

The "Rendering of Human Brain" graphic at the top of the article is NOT actually a picture of the Human Brain, unless someone would like to explain why there isn't a central sulcus on this poor individual, and why the Lateral/Sylvian fissure is half the size of the entire cortex??? Besides, the picture is unnecessarily philosophical. I recommend a regular, formal skin-tone drawing like the ones that appear in textbooks instead of a levitating giant's demented brain. But that's just me... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.169.140.228 (talk) 23:01, 25 October 2008 (UTC)

I think it is pretty harmless. In fact, I'll go a step further... although it might be anatomically inaccurate (i'll take you on on your word for that matter because you seem to know what you're talking about) it serves a more important function; it is evocative. I think there is something inescapably philosophical/epistemological/ironic built right into the very self-referential nature of Cognitive Science. Simply put, the subject matter (thinking process) and apparatus used to approach that study (human thinking process) are really one and the same aren't they? I think this image captures the importance of that relationship. A think a skin-tone drawing would be better suited for a neurobiology textbook wouldn't it? Either way, the bigger problem is this whole article needs to properly re-written. Skychildandsonofthesun (talk) 07:36, 29 March 2009 (UTC)

Further thoughts in defense of giant mutated monkey brain: Cognitive Science is not a discipline limited to human cognition. Cognitive Science studies cognition in general. Animals have cognitive processes. Therefore, monkeys have cognitive processes. Therefore, use of monkey brain (no matter how mutated and giant) still falls very justifiably under the feild of Cognitive Science. I'm glad to see the persistence of this image on this page. In fact, I have even embedded it in my user page b/c it is so appropriate to the idea of self-reference. --Skychildandsonofthesun (talk) 08:11, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Education in list of fields?

The cognitive science society lists education as one of the disciplines which is embraced by cognitive scientists, should it be included in the list of disciplines in the first paragraph on this page? ----Action potential ^{discuss contribs} 13:39, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

Cognition is indeed very important in education. The work of Jean Piaget on cognitive development may in particular be relevant. However, on the other side, education may also only considered as an application domain of cognition? --Nabeth (talk) 15:22, 7 September 2009 (UTC)

What is going on with this first sentence?????

(Moved this from the top of the talk page to improve the flow. -- dzou (talk) 21:25, 5 December 2009 (UTC))

Guys, this first sentence is horrible. I haven't been to this page for a while and I honestly cannot believe what I am reading. Everything after the first sentence is concise, precise and clear (cog. sci. is multidisciplinarian + uses different methodologies + has many levels of analysis).

But the sentence, "Cognitive science is the study of mind or the study of thought," needs to be banished immediately. First of all, it is vague. How many other academic disciplines could make a similar claim?

Furthermore, it does not capture any of the essential components of the definition of cognitive science. For example, cognitive science did not exist prior to electronic computing. The realiztion that the computations done in the human brain and in the electronic circuit board share something in common cannot be overlooked.

I have no idea what the first sentence should read. Should it nominate the subject matter? Maybe it should do a little etymological/philological digging into the meaning of cognition? I have no idea but I do know that, "study of mind or study of thought" has got to go. Especially the word, "mind."

Here's a slightly better stab at it:

(1) "Cognitive science is a multidisciplinary approach to understanding thinking processes in general as well as their specific hardware implementations, whether that be the brain of a human, of an animal or an electronic computer." or,

(2) "Cognitive science is the study of human and non-human forms of computation."

I'm not sure. But someone with a PhD in this feild has to fix this for us, plese.

Thanks.

--Skychildandsonofthesun (talk) 13:08, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

p.s. please engage me here in this debate... I want to get some suggestions before I edit the actual article tab. thanks. --Skychildandsonofthesun (talk) 13:10, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

You may want to read wp:lead (in particular the Opening paragraph guideline). It's true that " the study of mind or the study of thought" is a useless definition, but take care not to make it something overly specific - the lead is section is intended for people without any previous knowledge on the subject. I prefer your (1) approach, it's more descriptive. Diego (talk) 15:46, 26 November 2009 (UTC)

Thanks Diego. I definitely agree that the first sentence should be both inviting for novices and comprehensive enough for scholars in this feild. Certianly tricky when you combine these criteria with the extremely elusive nature of just what the subject matter of cognitive science is. Either way, we have to fix this. I'd love some more input from other editors, but with or without more input I'm going to give this only a week or two and then make a change if it hasn't already. Thanks. --Skychildandsonofthesun (talk) 08:03, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

If we scroll down this talk page, under the heading "Re: Changes" there is a slightly better definition (i think from 2005) that reads: "Cognitive science is the scientific study of the mind and the computational processes that give rise to intelligence." I'd be tempted to add the term multidisciplinarian/interdisciplinarian. I'd also still try to avoid the word, "mind" though. What do we think about this one? --Skychildandsonofthesun (talk) 08:24, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Current definition too narrow? Part # 1

I think the current definition of cognitive science is too narrow, perhaps due to building on sources that are not up to date. The "nature of intelligence" is too narrow as it does not reflect the state of cognitive science today. Instead, I propose the following definition as provided by Friedenberg and Silverman:

"The scientific interdisciplinary study of the mind."

p.462 (also p.2), Cognitive Science: An introduction to the study of mind, 2006 (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage)

Ostracon (talk) 18:58, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

The OED online (1993) provides the following - s.v. cognitive:

"cognitive science, the science of cognition or intelligence, the study of the cognitive processes involved in the acquisition and use of knowledge."

Admittedly:

"Cognition in CS [cognitive science] denotes a class of advanced control mechanisms that allow for sophisticated adaptation to changing needs (e.g., learning and planning) through computations operating on mental representations." Strube (2001) Cognitive Science: Overview, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Retrieved online

However:

"Is cognitive science possible? There are philosophical traditions which claim that there can be no science of the mind." - italics added - Loewer (2001), Cognitive Science: Philosophical aspects, International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Retrieved online

And:

"The Cognitive Science Society, Inc. brings together researchers from many fields who hold a common goal: understanding the nature of the human mind." http://cognitivesciencesociety.org/index.html Retrieved 20 September 2009

Finally:

George Miller prefers "...to speak of the cognitive sciences, in the plural. But the original dream of a unified science that would discover the representational and computational capacities of the human mind and their structural and functional realization in the human brain still has an appeal that I cannot resist." p.144, The cognitive revolution: a historical perspective, TRENDS in Cognitive Sciences, 141-144, 7:3 March 2003

Ostracon (talk) 19:54, 20 September 2009 (UTC)

Current definition too narrow? Part # 2

(continued from Part #1)

Reworking of George Miller definition could read: (1) Cognitive Science is a unified, multi-disciplinary science of computation, and in particular of the structural and functional realization of this computation in the human brain. --Skychildandsonofthesun (talk) 08:16, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Here's another possible definition based on something I proposed to Skychildandsonofthesun: "Cognitive science is the scientific study of the computational processes and representations that give rise to intelligent behavior. It is a unified, multi-disciplinary field encompassing psychology, artificial intelligence, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, sociology, biology, and education." That list of fields is a conglomeration of the ones already listed there and the ones on the Cog Sci Society's site. -- dzou (talk) 21:18, 5 December 2009 (UTC)

I highly support this definition. It is two things: (1) extremely good (it is probably the best arrangement of the core ideas available), but almost more importantly, it is (2) massively better than the current one. I would like to a raise a motion that we now officially change it to DZOU's wording and watch like hawks to prevent "mind" from slipping back in. Will anyone second the motion or do we have to put it to a vote? --Skychildandsonofthesun (talk) 02:31, 6 December 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I really like Dzou's definition, although I question whether "unified" is necessary in this context. What precisely does it mean here? MartinPoulter (talk) 23:43, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

I was thinking of it as unified in the sense of a single field of study ("cognitive science") rather than a conglomeration of other, distinct fields ("the cognitive sciences"). I'm fine with dropping the word "unified" since I think the definition comes across the same way without it. --dzou (talk) 15:41, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with minds? And brains? And society? Would be nice to have some relatively concrete terms in there (if minds can be considered such things!). I think cognitive science is a vague collection of research at the boundaries between two or more fields in one of the standard enumerations (e.g., computation and psychology; psychology and philosophy; ...). What is the main goal? I would have thought the idea is to model social, psychological, and neurological processes of thinking, communication, and action (and related stuff!) at various levels of abstraction, and mappings between the levels. There has to be more to it than representation and tranformations thereof, in the abstract, but certainly these ideas are central.

I wonder if one solution might be to put some more work into examples of approaches in the opening paragraph? Some ideas that come to mind include relevance theory, which is fairly explicitly bridging between mind and society; the growing field of neurosymbolic integration, which uses mathematics to bridge between logical and connectionist models; and... well there must be other approaches which can be pointed to explicitly. Maybe stuff on making sense of personal and sub-personal levels of description from the philosophical end? Hell, even quantum consciousness stuff occasionally gets published in the Cog Sci journal. Cognitive science is a very broad network of fields.

I sense the issue being debated on this talk page goes beyond the issue of finding a good definition for wikipedia and onto the philosophy of cogsci :-) The Cognitive Science Society website is exceedingly vague on definitions - I wonder what arguments behind the scenes made it this way.

--Andy Fugard (talk) 14:51, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

Very interesting points Andy. I am going to take a look at our proposed definitions from a few months ago and compare them to the current definition we have now, which I think is extremely bad if I recall. (11am - Jan 16 2010) I also would like to mention that this is one of the most difficult definitions I have ever worked on. It needs to do many things: (1) describe the science of thinking in a non-ambigious way, (2) pay reference to the many sub-fields and foundational disciplines of cognitive science, (3) be simple for first-time readers to get the general essence of what cog sci is, (4) technical enough to appease us wordsmithy dingbats. --  SKY_child  15:59, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

Andy's definition is quite good. I am going to drop the, "usually defined as" though and for my rationale you can read my section on Andy's talk page -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Andy_Fugard#re:_Cognitive_Science --  SKY_child  18:36, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

The main pic

How about, instead of the brain, an image like this one is used? I'm not sure the weak versus strong link idea is valid anymore. Also education is left out (it's included on the cogsci society page). I think it would be nice to have an image which quickly illustrates the different fields involved and the idea (I'm not sure it's held by all...) of cogsci as a matchmaker between disciplines. --Andy Fugard (talk) 16:37, 19 December 2009 (UTC)

At first I was ready to vigorously defend the mutated monkey brain as I have done many times in the past, but to be honest your new image is growing on me... except one crucial point. I firmly believe that the education node should be replaced with, "computer science." Although cognitive science can be applied to teaching/pedagogy it also can be applied to anything in this world that is influenced by thinking (politics, marketing, criminology) and so it is an application of cognitive science, not a founding discipline. I recommend replacing it. --  SKY_child  03:12, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that the artificial intelligence image and text already covers it. Not all aspects of computer science are directly relevant to cognitive science, and the inclusion of AI probably includes the most important aspects of CS. Conversely, education is important not just for the Piagetian ideas mentioned above, but also within the work of knowledge theorists like Phillip Johnson-Laird and Paul Thaggard. In addition, recent work in educational cognitive neuroscience (for example, looking at how education may actually help to construct the adult literate, numerate brains that standard cognitive neuroscience studies), shows that education is not just an application of cognitive science, but also part and parcel of what it is that we are studying when we study human cognition, embedded in brains, but also with those brains embedded in a culture that educates them. Edhubbard (talk) 22:12, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

EdHubbard: you are absolutely right on both points. When I looked at my watchlist today I was ready to defend the CS versus AI point (I was going to say that CS is the larger category of which AI is but a sub-set and that CS contributes to Cog Sci in areas other than just AI research) but after further consideration I think I actually disagree with my earlier point and agree with yours. Namely that AI is the most relevant part of CS for Cog Sci. I still think some other areas of CS are relevant though (the electrical engineering behind getting software to be implemented on hardware, or the computational theory stuff are two examples of non-AI, CS relevance to Cog Sci). I'll let other editors pass judgment on the CS versus AI point. But your defense of educational research as a contributor not just a benefactor of Cog Sci is absolutely correct. Theories of learning, skill and expertise as well as the relevance of early childhood linguistic development research are just some examples. Thanks EdHubbard for providing this perspective. --  SKY_child  23:11, 17 January 2010 (UTC)

I just found the following image (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ad/Eugenics_congress_logo.png) while doing work on the Nietzsche page and think it is perfect analogue for our new Cog Sci image. At some point it might be nice to include all the information that our current Cog Sci image has (the pics for each discipline are actually very helpful) but incorporate them into a tree metaphor drawing similar to the eugenics one I have linked here. Might have to enlist the services of someone skillfull at hand drawing. --  SKY_child  15:37, 28 January 2010 (UTC) From what I learned, modern cognitive science begins with Immanuel Kant, the father of epistemology. Before him, it was just assumed that a natural law conclusion could be presented in such narrowed down terms as as to be indesputible (evidence), and the analysis of it presented in such a way as it could not be misinterpreted, misunderstood, or misconstrued (linquistics). Immanuel Kant questioned whether this was possible. From his work, science went from a tautology of whether something is the absolute truth or not, to a taugology which chose between this (theory) or that (theory). —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.171.164.127 (talk) 19:24, 23 July 2010 (UTC)

Speedy deletion of Main Picture

First, I am not a Cognitive Science person. I am a researcher in a related field who stopped to double-check the definition of Cognitive Science before referring a colleague to researchers in that field. However, I added a holdon template to the request for speedy deletion of the main picture in the article because it meets none of the criteria for speedy deletion

Summarizing for each of the 8 criteria for files:

1. It is not (as far as I could see) redundant.

2. It is not corrupt or empty

3. The licensing is correct and even liberal

4. The licensing information is provided

5,6, & 7. The image is free so the "unused unfree," "missing non-free use rationale," and "Invalid fair-use claim" deletion rules do not apply

8. It is not duplicated in the commons. (A search for Septagram did not turn up a copy.)

Glancing through the long discussion page, I was unable to find any rationale for the speedy deletion request.

However, my guess is that some editor decided to replace the "Mutated Monkey Brain" picture with this one, and some other editor stuck the speedy deletion tag on the image to declare that they disagreed. If my suspicion is correct, then the proper procedure is a discussion and negotiation between the editors who frequent this page over what is an appropriate main image.

I think that whether the editors decide to keep the current Septagram image, it can remain on Wikipedia (or maybe in the commons) because it is free and might be useful to someone later on. It looks like someone spent some time to gather the appropriate free images and combine them into a diagram. It would be a shame to remove that work even if the editors decide not to use it for this particular part of this particular article.

I won't be involved in the discussion because I am currently swamped, but I wanted to keep someone's work from being unnecessarily deleted when all that may be called for is changing what image is used as the main image on the page.

BrotherE (talk) 02:28, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

(As my two cents for that discussion: I have not seen the "Monkey Brain" image. However, personally, I like the Septagram image better than just an image of a brain because Cognitive Science is a field and the Septagram image gives an idea of the breadth and interdisciplinary nature of that field. A brain, however symbolic and central to the study it may be, doesn't explicitly show the fullness of the field.)

BrotherE (talk) 02:28, 30 December 2009 (UTC)

You can see the "Monkey Brain" image on my user page. I personally think it is quite clever. It conveys the self-referential nature of cognitive science: brains thinking about how brains work. --  SKY_child  01:45, 16 January 2010 (UTC)

ICOGSI

Any reason why "The undergraduate portal into graduate cognitive science", a recent addition, should be included in the external links? I excluded it from a recent WP:ELNO purge, but a second opinion would be welcome. Does it offer a "unique resource" (as WP:ELNO has it) or is it just WP:SPAM? --Old Moonraker (talk) 14:40, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

I think it's borderline. There are clearly some good things in there, like the brief history of cognitive science, and some career stuff, but I'm not sure that it is really a critical link to include either. It's certainly not WP:SPAM in the traditional sense, since it is a link to an academic program not a profit-making venture, but I'm not convinced that it is a truly "unique resource" either. Conversely, I did reinstate the link to the Cognitive Science Society, since this is the academic society that goes along with the article topic. In general, I think less we should have as little as possible, but not less. ICOGSCI might be expendable. Cheers, Edhubbard (talk) 15:36, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

reply2: The link to Roy Ruddle's history of cog sci page is broken. I've found his personal page at Leeds here, but cannot find the old history page. Rather than deleting that link, I've just tagged it with a deadlink template. Edhubbard (talk) 15:44, 28 July 2010 (UTC)

Machines

I'm confused by Andy Fugard's recent edits. Looking back through the history, I see that he created the Cog. Sci. pentagram, which I had forgotten. But, now he wants to edit the lead to say that cognitive science studies representations in brains, and not machines. However, in the very image he created, he includes (correctly) Artificial intelligence as one of the many branches of science that contributes to cognitive science. The lead to the artificial intelligence page also states: "John McCarthy, who coined the term in 1956,[3] defines it as "the science and engineering of making intelligent machines."[4]". A search for the word representation shows that it appears 11 times on the page, including as part of one of the section headings Artificial_intelligence#Knowledge_representation. Similarly, as I noted in my last revert, there is a journal called "Minds and Machines". Andy, is your point that artificial intelligence is not part of cognitive science? If that's what you're driving at, I don't think you'll find a consensus for that. Is it that computers don't "represent"? That, at the very least, might be a defensible position (i.e., John Searle's Chinese room thought experiment). Is it that computers aren't machines? I really don't quite understand what the motivation for these changes are, as they seem to be directly at odds with quite a large body of literature. Edhubbard (talk) 21:02, 16 August 2010 (UTC)

(I merely made an early ugly version of the current very pretty logo.) I accept that cogsci studies machines in the sense that robots and computational models running on machines (note, not all computational models can actually run on concrete machines!) are used to model cognition, but I fail to see how cognitive science studies machines in their own right. How would that differ from computer science or electrical engineering? (Civil engineers building bridges also use computational models, but it would be very odd indeed to say that engineers build bridges in the real world and in machines.) You argue that AI "is part of" cogsci. I would argue that part of AI is part of cogsci. Similarly not all philosophy is a proper subset of cogsci. Now a possible compromise is to make explicit reference to Strong AI in the definition. I think it is very important that the definition is consistent with what current cognitive scientists actually do. For recent examples of that (of which I am sure you aware but maybe other readers are not) see the Cog Sci conference this year (2010)

I will try to make another edit compromise... --Andy Fugard (talk) 14:07, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

(ec) Hi Andy, sorry I didn't get back to you yesterday. One of the other post-docs in the lab had a grant application due, I had an article for a special issue due, etc. Anyway, I was going to copy your comments from my talk page to here, but I see you beat me to it. Yes, I think the Strong AI point is where we're disagreeing... maybe not in our actual current research, but whether the definition of cog sci on this page should or shouldn't include it, especially in the lead, given considerations of limited space.

For the benefit of everyone reading, part of the problem is that there are really two waves of cognitive science, the 1957s to mid-1980s version, dominated by strong AI, the strong version of the computer metaphor, Chomskyian linguistics, Herbert Simon, etc, etc, and the mid-1980s to current version, which has PDP neural networks, cognitive linguistics, embodied approaches, cognitive neuroscience, etc, etc (Ray Gibbs refers to this as a "second wave" of cognitive science [1]).

The current definition implicitly includes the strong AI view, and the associated functionalist Hilary Putnam view, and even Fodorian multiple realizability, as that was part of the strong view that cog sci should study the "mind" (and certainly not brains in that early phase). Although you and I clearly no longer buy into the strong AI argument that people who were studying computer programs were actually studying the mind, a number of very smart people did argue this within cog sci for a long time, leading to some amazing discoveries, and eventually some pretty clear dead ends. People like Alan Turing and the Turing test, Daniel Dennett whose view on the mind is, if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck... and against that John Searle and his Chinese room and simulation arguments (which you refer to above). Taking all of this out of the lead mis-represents the history of our field. On the other hand, leaving it in mis-represents the current state of affairs, where few of us ^:-> actually hold onto that view. Maybe one way to deal with this is to track down some references for the two-wave view, and make that more explicit in the lead?

On a related note, the current definition here is close enough to the Ranney definition on the page you left on my talk page, that it raises some WP:COPYVIO concerns. Even if only for that reason, I support some pretty aggressive changes from the current definition, and then we can work on how to handle the other issues. Cheers, Edhubbard (talk) 14:45, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

The which definition? I think a one-sentence description of cogsci is unlikely to be dramatically different to any other... --Andy Fugard (talk) 15:17, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Sorry, the Thagard one (Ranney was my Cog. Sci. 101 instructor, and we used the Thagard book... anyway!) in the SEP: "Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence, embracing philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology." [2]. The current definition on this page, which highlights mind and intelligence (with the machines part we've been discussing) seems similar enough to be somewhat troubling. I agree that any list of the component fields has to be pretty similar, but the mind and intelligence part is what caught my eye. Cheers, Edhubbard (talk) 15:23, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Fear not, I swiftly removed the reference to mind and intelligence some hours ago :-) My definition most certainly did not mention either. Brains and emotion there were and are a plenty, however. --Andy Fugard (talk) 15:30, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Right... I should have looked at your last edit on the main page, too. Excellent. So, now, back to our discussion of machines. Any thoughts? Edhubbard (talk) 15:35, 18 August 2010 (UTC)

Still processing... my current thought is that since AI (and part of AI) is only a fifth of the big picture, why mention machines here at all. But then I was thinking, can we find examples of what makes a compsci information-centric approach from all of the contributers especially cogsci-like? Really the whole first paragraph needs to kick in with a good justification of the approach. There must be one or two such intros around in the literature. We might also want to mention something of the controversy. --Andy Fugard (talk) 14:48, 19 August 2010 (UTC)

Shouldn't there always be an "N+1" node of this diagram? I mean the one with a big "?", representing whatever new field cogsci will co-opt next?

Heptagram picture has bad link mapping

The main picture at the top of the page shows 7 different sciences supposed to be a part of cognitive science. Someone has made this picture a map area where each part of the picture is supposed to link to the correct article on wikipedia, but the mapping is off. When hovering over the picture I can indeed find a circle with all the 7 links, but all of the links are located in the top left corner, above the Education icon. Hopefully somebody with more knowledge of how these things works will take the time to adjust the code so that the links are located where they should be, on top of each icon. It might be that my choice of browser affects if the code works or not (I'm using Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.13) Gecko/20100914 SeaMonkey/2.0.8). -- Nillli (talk) 07:28, 8 October 2010 (UTC)

I noticed this same problem (on this version of the article), using both Mozilla (3.6.8) and IE (8.0.blablabla) on a 1366x768 screen. Rather than try to debug the code, I just changed the picture to be a normal image with links in its caption. This fixes the problem (the links work now because they're not fancy), as well as allowing the user to reach the image page by clicking, which is desirable anyway because of licensing bla bla bla, and it is good to have a caption anyway. Seems like a good way to kill three birds with one very simple stone. rʨanaɢ (talk) 03:03, 18 October 2010 (UTC)

Important Universities where Cognitive Science is being researched ?

I believe that info would be helpful to the reader, since CogSci is so new and fluid, there aren't too many schools around the world where it is seriously researched or even present. It could be another section of the article, maybe? Capricornis (talk) 18:50, 7 December 2010 (UTC)