|
What is Cognitive Science?
Overview
Overview Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind and the nature
of intelligence. Cognitive scientists come from a wide range of backgrounds including
anthropology, biology, computer science, education, philosophy, psychology, mathematics,
neuroscience, and others. Scholars in this field share common goals of better understanding
cognition. Furthermore, cognitive science explores the nature of the mind and intelligence systems.
At the core of cognitive science is the pursuit of formal theories of mind and information.
The field is inherently interdisciplinary, and individuals who work in this field combine
information and expertise from a variety of disciplines like those mentioned above.
Both natural intelligence in humans and artificial intelligence in computers are central themes
explored by students and scholars in the field. Cognitive science involves
aspects of complex cognition, computational models of thought processes, knowledge
representation, and the emergent behavior of large-scale interacting systems. At the most basic
level, Cognitive science seeks a better understanding of the mind, the process and tools of
teaching and learning, of mental abilities, and of the development of intelligent devices
that can augment human capabilities in constructive ways. -Courtesy of the I.U. Cognitive Science Program
Historical Breakthroughs Attempts to understand the mind and its operation go back at least to the Ancient
Greeks, when philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle tried to explain the nature
of human knowledge. The study of mind remained the province of philosophy
until the nineteenth century, when experimental psychology developed. Wilhelm
Wundt and his students initiated laboratory methods for studying mental operations
more systematically. Within a few decades, however, experimental psychology became
dominated by behaviorism, a view that virtually denied the existence of mind.
According to behaviorists such as J. B. Watson, psychology should restrict itself
to examining the relation between observable stimuli and observable behavioral
responses. Talk of consciousness and mental representations was banished from
respectable scientific discussion. Especially in North America, behaviorism
largely dominated the psychological scene through the 1950s. Around 1956, the intellectual landscape began to change dramatically. George
Miller summarized numerous studies which showed that the capacity of human
thinking is limited, with short-term memory, for example, limited to around
seven items. He proposed that memory limitations can be overcome by recoding
information into chunks, mental representations that require mental procedures
for encoding and decoding the information. At this time, primitive computers had been around for only a few years,
but pioneers such as John McCarthy, Marvin Minsky, Allen Newell, and Herbert
Simon were founding the field of artificial intelligence. In addition, Noam
Chomsky rejected behaviorist assumptions about language as a learned habit
and proposed instead to explain language comprehension in terms of mental
grammars consisting of rules. The six thinkers mentioned in this paragraph
can be viewed as the founders of cognitive science.
Major Disciplines Within Cognitive Science The true interdisciplinary nature of cognitive science provides for a unique
blend of expertise from numerous academic disciplines. Although the list of related
disciplines is constantly changing, the traditional disciplines of cognitive science
include anthropology, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and
psychology. With the advent of new interest and research in cognitive science, several
other disciplines are a part of the field including artificial intelligence, biology,
communications, education, engineering, history and philosophy of science, informatics,
mathematics, music, sociology, speech and hearing sciences and others.
Current Research Trends A complete listing of the countless amount of work being done by cognitive scientists
worldwide would be an immense task and this fact alludes to the true beauty of cognitive
science. The vast array of research in cognitive science is all centered around understanding
the workings of the mind and the nature of intelligence. The following is a broad sample of
recent research themes in cognitive science at universities and research institutes:
Careers in Cognitive Science Training in cognitive science prepares students admirably well for careers in academia and
research as well as numerous other major fields of the twenty-first century, including:
computer programming, telecommunications, information processing, medical analysis, data
retrieval, human-computer interaction, and education. Careers Specific to a Bachelor's Degree Career options in any of the previously mentioned fields will usually be enhanced with an
advanced degree. Because cognitive science related jobs often require significant amounts of
technical training and knowledge, many individuals seeking these positions will have a graduate
degree. Thus, a master or doctoral degree will certainly make a person more competitive in this
job market. Many management and industrial research positions and all college level academic
research and teaching positions will require a graduate degree. Due to the sharp rise in technology oriented industries, the number of career positions
available in cognitive science has grown enormously, and this trend will likely continue.
Career growth potential is also excellent in terms of salary as well as advancement in many
diversified fields and geographical locations. The interdisciplinary nature of cognitive science
also means that graduates with training in this field are often well-prepared to pursue career paths
in several different disciplines.
-Courtesy of the I.U. Cognitive Science Program
Other Resources Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Questions? Comments?
|
Editorial Board Contact Information: |
