Cognitive Science: What is it?
What is Cognitive Science ? ...the study of how real systems, from animals
to machines, could know about the world and act intelligently in it: how
they could perceive, think, reason, interact and deal with matters from
tables and chairs to numbers and democracy. The key to Cognitive Science
is that which makes mind unique in the world - its ability to represent
- and, arguably, that which makes human beings unique among animals - their
ability to use language.
Cognitive Science is necessarily an interdisciplinary field. It connects
with and draws from the philosophy of mind and language; cognitive psychology
and developmental psychology; computer science, artificial intelligence,
and robotics; linguistics; anthropology; mathematics; and the study of the
brain. All of these fields will have to be taken into account in ultimately
understanding how the mind works, and, possibly, building machines that
can think.
Humans have experienced wonder about the mind - what it could be and how
it could possibly work - for thousands of years. These questions form one
of the last uncharted frontiers of science - other once mysterious phenomena
such as fire and life are now understood at least in principle. Today, for
the first time, there is excitement and expectation that the mind might
finally be accounted for as a natural phenomenon in the universe as a whole.
There is no more complex nor more exciting scientific effort in the world
today.
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