Talk:Cognitive science

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Mind and Brain portal

[edit] 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)

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)

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)

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.

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

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)

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?)

[edit] Maggie Boden

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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] Universalist Tendency

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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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

[edit] 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

[edit] Symbolic model

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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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

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)

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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

[edit] 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)

[edit] 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>

[edit] "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)

[edit] columns-list 3 on the see also

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

[edit] 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)