Editing Cognitive science (section)

==Principles==
===Levels of analysis===
{{See also|Functionalism (philosophy of mind)}}
A central tenet of cognitive science is that a complete understanding of the mind/brain cannot be attained by studying only a single level. An example would be the problem of remembering a phone number and recalling it later. One approach to understanding this process would be to study behavior through direct observation, or [[naturalistic observation]]. A person could be presented with a phone number and be asked to recall it after some delay of time; then the accuracy of the response could be measured. Another approach to measure cognitive ability would be to study the firings of individual [[neuron]]s while a person is trying to remember the phone number. Neither of these experiments on its own would fully explain how the process of remembering a phone number works. Even if the technology to map out every neuron in the brain in real-time were available and it were known when each neuron fired it would still be impossible to know how a particular firing of neurons translates into the observed behavior. Thus an understanding of how these two levels relate to each other is imperative. [[Francisco Varela]], in ''The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience'', argues that "the new sciences of the mind need to enlarge their horizon to encompass both lived human experience and the possibilities for transformation inherent in human experience".<ref>Varela, F. J., Thompson, E., & Rosch, E. (1991). The embodied mind: cognitive science and human experience. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.</ref> On the classic cognitivist view, this can be provided by a functional level account of the process. Studying a particular phenomenon from multiple levels creates a better understanding of the processes that occur in the brain to give rise to a particular behavior.
[[David Marr (psychologist)|Marr]]<ref>Marr, D. (1982). ''Vision: A Computational Investigation into the Human Representation and Processing of Visual Information''. W. H. Freeman.</ref> gave a famous description of three levels of analysis:

# The ''computational theory'', specifying the goals of the computation;
# ''Representation and algorithms'', giving a representation of the inputs and outputs and the algorithms which transform one into the other; and
# The ''hardware implementation'', or how algorithm and representation may be physically realized.

===Interdisciplinary nature===
Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary field with contributors from various fields, including [[psychology]], [[neuroscience]], [[linguistics]], [[philosophy of mind]], [[computer science]], [[anthropology]] and [[biology]]. Cognitive scientists work collectively in hope of understanding the mind and its interactions with the surrounding world much like other sciences do. The field regards itself as compatible with the physical sciences and uses the [[scientific method]] as well as [[simulation]] or [[model (abstract)|modeling]], often comparing the output of models with aspects of human cognition. Similarly to the field of psychology, there is some doubt whether there is a unified cognitive science, which have led some researchers to prefer 'cognitive sciences' in plural.<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Miller | first1 = G. A. | year = 2003 | title = The cognitive revolution: a historical perspective | journal = Trends in Cognitive Sciences | volume = 7 | issue = 3| pages = 141–144 | doi = 10.1016/S1364-6613(03)00029-9 | pmid=12639696| s2cid = 206129621 }}</ref><ref>{{Cite journal|last1=Ferrés|first1=Joan|last2=Masanet|first2=Maria-Jose|date=2017|title=Communication Efficiency in Education: Increasing Emotions and Storytelling|journal=Comunicar|language=es|volume=25|issue=52|pages=51–60|doi=10.3916/c52-2017-05|issn=1134-3478|doi-access=free|hdl=10272/14087|hdl-access=free}}</ref>

Many, but not all, who consider themselves cognitive scientists hold a [[functionalism (philosophy of mind)|functionalist]] view of the mind—the view that mental states and processes should be explained by their function – what they do.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Polger |first=Thomas W. |date=2012 |title=Functionalism as a philosophical theory of the cognitive sciences |url=https://wires.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/wcs.1170 |journal=WIREs Cognitive Science |language=en |volume=3 |issue=3 |pages=337–348 |doi=10.1002/wcs.1170 |pmid=26301466 |issn=1939-5086|url-access=subscription }}</ref> According to the [[multiple realizability]] account of functionalism, even non-human systems such as robots and computers can be ascribed as having cognition.{{cn|date=September 2024}}

===''Cognitive'' science, the term===
The term "cognitive" in "cognitive science" is used for "any kind of mental operation or structure that can be studied in precise terms" ([[George Lakoff|Lakoff]] and [[Mark Johnson (professor)|Johnson]], 1999). This conceptualization is very broad, and should not be confused with how "cognitive" is used in some traditions of [[analytic philosophy]], where "cognitive" has to do only with formal rules and [[truth-conditional semantics]].

The earliest entries for the word "''cognitive''" in the [[OED]] take it to mean roughly ''"pertaining to the action or process of knowing"''. The first entry, from 1586, shows the word was at one time used in the context of discussions of [[Plato]]nic theories of [[knowledge]]. Most in cognitive science, however, presumably do not believe their field is the study of anything as certain as the knowledge sought by Plato.<ref>{{Citation |last=Shields |first=Christopher |title=Aristotle's Psychology |date=2020 |url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/aristotle-psychology/ |encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy |editor-last=Zalta |editor-first=Edward N. |edition=Winter 2020 |publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University |access-date=2022-10-20 |archive-date=20 October 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20221020122221/https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2020/entries/aristotle-psychology/ |url-status=live }}</ref>