Mind, Body, World

Foundations of Cognitive Science

By Michael R.W. Dawson
Categories: Science, Technology & Society, Science, Health, Social Work & Psychology, Psychology
Publisher: Athabasca University Press
Ebook (Kindle) : 9781771990509, 506 pages, September 2013
Paperback : 9781927356173, 520 pages, July 2013
Ebook (PDF) : 9781927356180, 506 pages, September 2013
Ebook (EPUB) : 9781927356197, 506 pages, September 2013

Table of contents

List of Figures and Tables
Preface
Who Is This Book Written For?
Acknowledgements

Chapter 1. The Cognitive Sciences: One or Many?
Chapter 2. Multiple Levels of Investigation
Chapter 3. Elements of Classical Cognitive Science
Chapter 4. Elements of Connectionist Cognitive Science
Chapter 5. Elements of Embodied Cognitive Science
Chapter 6. Classical Music and Cognitive Science
Chapter 7. Marks of the Classical?
Chapter 8. Seeing and Visualizing
Chapter 9. Towards a Cognitive Dialectic

References / Index

Description

Cognitive science arose in the 1950s when it became apparent that a number of disciplines, including psychology, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy, were fragmenting. Perhaps owing to the field’s immediate origins in cybernetics, as well as to the foundational assumption that cognition is information processing, cognitive science initially seemed more unified than psychology. However, as a result of differing interpretations of the foundational assumption and dramatically divergent views of the meaning of the term information processing, three separate schools emerged: classical cognitive science, connectionist cognitive science, and embodied cognitive science.

Examples, cases, and research findings taken from the wide range of phenomena studied by cognitive scientists effectively explain and explore the relationship among the three perspectives. Intended to introduce both graduate and senior undergraduate students to the foundations of cognitive science, Mind, Body, World addresses a number of questions currently being asked by those practicing in the field: What are the core assumptions of the three different schools? What are the relationships between these different sets of core assumptions? Is there only one cognitive science, or are there many different cognitive sciences? Giving the schools equal treatment and displaying a broad and deep understanding of the field, Dawson highlights the fundamental tensions and lines of fragmentation that exist among the schools and provides a refreshing and unifying framework for students of cognitive science.