Cognitive Science - Brain Science

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Cognitive Science

Definition

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of mind and intelligence, embracing philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, and anthropology. Its intellectual origins are in the mid-1950s when researchers in several fields began to develop theories of mind based on complex representations and computational procedures. Its organizational origins are in the mid-1970s when the Cognitive Science Society was formed and the journal Cognitive Science began. Since then, more than sixty universities in North America and Europe have established cognitive science programs and many others have instituted courses in cognitive science. (Stanford, 2006)

Learning and development are the processes by which we acquire information over time. Infants are born with little or no knowledge (depending on how knowledge is defined), yet they rapidly acquire the ability to use language, walk, and recognize people and objects. Research in learning and development aim to explain the mechanisms by which these processes might take place. (Wiki, 2006)

A major question in the study of cognitive development is the extent to which certain abilities are innate or learned. This is often framed in terms of the nature versus nurture debate. The nativist view emphasizes that certain features are innate to an organism and are determined by its genetic endowment. The empiricist view, on the other hand, emphasizes that certain abilities are learned from the environment. It is clear that intelligent behavior has components that are both innate and learned, but the extent to which particular behaviors are innate is a major research question. In the area of language acquisition, for example, many questions remain about whether or not a special language acquisition device is necessary to facilitate the learning of language, or if humans can learn language through more general learning processes that take advantage of the information available in the environment. (Wiki, 2006)

Psychology	Philosophy	Neuroscience	Linguistics	Computer Science
John R. Anderson Leon Festinger Lawrence Barsalou Lera Boroditsky Robert Goldstone Daniel Kahneman James L. (Jay) McClelland George A. Miller Steven Pinker Jonathan Potter Eleanor Rosch Linda B. Smith Anne Treisman	David Chalmers Patricia Churchland Paul Churchland Andy Clark Daniel Dennett Jerry Fodor Stephen Laurence Colin McGinn Roger Penrose Karl Popper John Searle Stephen Stich Paul Thagard Tim van Gelder	Antonio Damasio John Eccles Gerald Edelman Andrew and Alexander Fingelkurts Michael Gazzaniga Christof Koch Brenda Milner Karl Pribram Vilayanur S. Ramachandran Olaf Sporns	Noam Chomsky Alan Prince Ray Jackendoff George Lakoff	David Kirsh Douglas Hofstadter Marvin Minsky Seymour Papert Roger Schank Herbert Simon Alan Turing
Other/Misc Categories
Margaret ('Maggie') Boden Kenneth Craik Friedrich Hayek Christopher Longuet-Higgins Edwin Hutchins Rafael E. Núñez