Cognitive science: history, psychological foundations, subject, tasks and methods of research

What can be common in psychology, linguistics, the doctrine of artificial intelligence and the theory of knowledge? All of the above successfully integrates cognitive science. This interdisciplinary direction is engaged in the study of cognitive and thought processes occurring in the brain of man and animal.

History of Cognitive Science

Still known to all the great philosophers Plato and Aristotle were interested in the nature of human consciousness. A lot of works and assumptions of the times of Ancient Greece were put forward on this subject. In the 17th century, the French mathematician, philosopher and physicist René Descartes somewhat popularized the notion of this science, saying that the body and mind of living beings are independent objects.

The author of the concept of "cognitivistics" in 1973 was Christopher Longuet-Higgins, who studied artificial intelligence. A few years later, the journal Cognitive Science was created. After this event, cognitive science became an independent direction.

Consider the names of the most famous researchers in this field:

• John Searle created a thought experiment called "The Chinese Room".
• Physiologist James McClelland, who studies the work of the brain.
• Stephen Pinker is an expert in experimental psychology.
• George Lakoff is a linguistic researcher.

Modern cognitive science

Scientists try to prove in practice the connection between the physiology of the brain and mental phenomena, using visualizations. If in the past centuries the consciousness of a person was not taken into account, today its study enters the main tasks of cognitive science.

The development of this teaching as a whole depends on technological progress. For example, tomography, the invention of which significantly influenced the further continuation of the existence and development of cognitive science. Scanning allowed to see the brain from within, therefore, to study the processes of its functioning. Scientists argue that over time, technological progress will help mankind to uncover the secrets of our mind. For example, the interaction of the brain and the central nervous system.

The subject, tasks and methods of research of cognitive science

Everything that concerns the human mind until the 20th century was just a guess, because at that time it was impossible to test theories in practice. Views on the work of the brain are formed on the basis of borrowed information about artificial intelligence, psychological experiments and physiology of the higher central nervous system.

Symbolism and connectivity are classical methods of calculation, modeling cognitive systems. The first way is based on the idea of the similarity of thinking of a person with a computer having a central processor and processing data streams. Connectionism completely contradicts symbolism, explaining this by the incompatibility of neurobiology data on brain activity. Human thinking can be stimulated by artificial neural networks that process data simultaneously.

Cognitive science as an umbrella term was considered by E. S. Kubryakova in 2004, since the teaching includes a number of interacting disciplines:

• Philosophy of consciousness.
• Experimental and cognitive psychology.
• Artificial Intelligence.
• Cognitive linguistics, ethology and anthropology.
• Neurophysiology, Neurology and Neurobiology.
• Material cognitive science.
• Neuro-linguistics and psycholinguistics.

Philosophy of consciousness as one of the components of cognitive science

The subject of studying this discipline are the features of consciousness and its relation to physical reality (the mental properties of the mind). American philosopher of modernity Richard Rorty called this teaching the only useful in philosophy.

There is a considerable number of problems arising from attempts to answer the question of what consciousness is. One of the most important topics that cognitive science studies with this discipline is man's will. Materialists believe that consciousness is part of physical reality, and the world around us is completely subject to the laws of physics. Thus, it can be argued that human behavior is subject to science. Therefore, we are not free.

Other philosophers, including I. Kant, are convinced that reality can not be completely subject to physics. Supporters of this point of view consider genuine freedom the result of the fulfillment of the debt required by reason.

Cognitive psychology

This discipline studies the cognitive processes of man. The psychological foundations of cognitive science contain information about memory, feelings, attention, imagination, logical thinking, and ability to make decisions. The results of modern studies of information transformation are based on the similarity of computing devices and cognitive human processes. The most common concept is a psyche like a device with the ability to convert signals. Internal cognitive patterns and activity of the organism during cognition play a major role in this doctrine. These two systems have the ability to input, store and output information.

Cognitive Ethology

Discipline studies the rational activity and intelligence of animals. Speaking of ethology, it is impossible not to remember Charles Darwin. English naturalist claimed not only about the presence of emotions, intelligence, ability to imitate and learn from animals, but also about reasoning. The founder of ethology in 1973 was the Nobel laureate in physiology Konrad Lorenz. The scientist discovered in animals surprising at that time the ability to transmit information to each other, obtained in the learning process.

Stephen Wise, a professor at Harvard University, in his work with the characteristic name "Break the Cage" agreed that only one creature lives on the planet Earth, capable of creating music, building rockets and solving mathematical problems. It is, of course, a reasonable person. But not only people are able to take offense, yearn, think, and so on. That is, "our smaller brothers" have communication skills, morals, norms of behavior and aesthetic feelings. Ukrainian academic neuroscience O. Krishtal noted that today behaviorism is overcome, and animals are no longer considered as "living robots".

Cognitive Graphics

Learning combines the techniques and methods of the colorful presentation of the problem in order to get a clue about its settlement or solution entirely. Cognitive science applies these methods in artificial intelligence systems that are able to turn a textual description of tasks into a figurative representation.

D. A. Pospelov formed three primary tasks of computer graphics:

• The formation of models of knowledge that could represent objects that characterize logical and figurative thinking;
• Visualization of information that can not yet be characterized by words;
• The search for ways of transition from figurative pictures to the formulation of processes hidden behind their dynamics.