Thinking About Cognition

What happens when we think? How do people make judgments? While different theories abound—and are heatedly debated—most are based on an algorithmic model of how the brain works. Howard Margolis builds a fascinating case for a theory that thinking is based on recognizing patterns and that this process is intrinsically a-logical. Margolis gives a Darwinian account of how pattern recognition evolved to reach human cognitive abilities. Illusions of judgment—standard anomalies where people consistently misjudge or misperceive what is logically implied or really present—are often used in cognitive science to explore the workings of the cognitive process. The explanations given for these anomalous results have generally explained only the anomaly under study and nothing more. Margolis provides a provocative and systematic analysis of these illusions, which explains why such anomalies exist and recur. Offering empirical applications of his theory, Margolis turns to historical cases to show how an individual's cognitive repertoire—the available cognitive patterns and their relation to cues—changes or resists changes over time. Here he focuses on the change in worldview occasioned by the Copernican discovery: not only how an individual might come to see things in a radically new way, but how it is possible for that new view to spread and become the dominant one. A reanalysis of the trial of Galileo focuses on social cognition and its interactions with politics. In challenging the prevailing paradigm for understanding how the human mind works, Patterns, Thinking, and Cognition is certain to stimulate fruitful debate.

100 Years after the discovery of Alzheimer’s disease, neurological diseases and psychiatric disorders represent the largest and fastest growing unmet medical market with 2 billion affected people worldwide. Life expectancy of humans continues to increase, and the world population is aging. Advanced age may lead to deterioration of cognitive functions of the brain. There seems to be consensus that on the background of aging, several factors may render humans prone to dementia. Psychiatric and neurological disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or Parkinson’s disease may contribute to development of dementia. More people today are looking for help regarding their learning and memory capabilities. Although increasing knowledge on neuronal networks is transforming our view of the human brain and its function and we understand psychiatric and neurological diseases better today than ever before, novel therapies are needed to respond to the growing demand of patients for assistance with memory loss and learning impairment. In fact, it is expected that novel therapies aiming at the processing of amyloid, or at activation of glutamatergic or nicotinergic systems will demonstrate adequate efficacy in improving learning and memory disturbances. This publication stands as a comprehensive overview of the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the development of cognitive impairment. It integrates discoveries concerning dementia, such as mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease associated dementia, vascular dementia, retardation syndromes, and psychiatric and neurological disorders related cognitive impairments. This book will be useful to physicians, biologists, and those pursuing an interest or concerned with memory impairment. 100 Years after the discovery of Alzheimer’s disease, neurological diseases and psychiatric disorders represent the largest and fastest growing unmet medical market with 2 billion affected people worldwide. Life expectancy of humans continues to increase, and the world population is aging. Advanced age may lead to deterioration of cognitive functions of the brain. There seems to be consensus that on the background of aging, several factors may render humans prone to dementia. Psychiatric and neurological disorders such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or Parkinson’s disease may contribute to development of dementia. More people today are looking for help regarding their learning and memory capabilities. Although increasing knowledge on neuronal networks is transforming our view of the human brain and its function and we understand psychiatric and neurological diseases better today than ever before, novel therapies are needed to respond to the growing demand of patients for assistance with memory loss and learning impairment. In fact, it is expected that novel therapies aiming at the processing of amyloid, or at activation of glutamatergic or nicotinergic systems will demonstrate adequate efficacy in improving learning and memory disturbances. This publication stands as a comprehensive overview of the cellular and molecular mechanisms underlying the development of cognitive impairment. It integrates discoveries concerning dementia, such as mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer’s disease associated dementia, vascular dementia, retardation syndromes, and psychiatric and neurological disorders related cognitive impairments. This book will be useful to physicians, biologists, and those pursuing an interest or concerned with memory impairment.

This unique book helps readers understand why cognitive psychologists approach problems as they do. It explains the questions cognitive psychologists ask, gives clear answers, and provides interesting, lively and comprehensive coverage of controversies in the field. This book is a study of cognition: of how humans think. Topics covered include visual perception, attention, sensory and primary memory, memory encoding, memory retrieval, memory storage, motor control, visual imagery, decision making and deductive reasoning, problem solving, and language. For readers that are interested in understanding the mysteries of cognition, including psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, and those in the field of cognitive neuroscience.

When retrieving a quote from memory, evaluating a testimony’s truthfulness, or deciding which products to buy, people experience immediate feelings of ease or difficulty, of fluency or disfluency. Such "experiences of thinking" occur with every cognitive process, including perceiving, processing, storing, and retrieving information, and they have been the defining element of a vibrant field of scientific inquiry during the last four decades. This book brings together the latest research on how such experiences of thinking influence cognition and behavior. The chapters present recent theoretical developments and describe the effects of these influences, as well as the practical implications of this research. The book includes contributions from the leading scholars in the field and provides a comprehensive survey of this expanding area. This integrative overview will be invaluable to researchers, teachers, students, and professionals in the field of social and cognitive psychology.

Leading scholars respond to the famous proposition by Andy Clark and David Chalmers that cognition and mind are not located exclusively in the head.

Thinking About Cognition is a collection of contributions that discusses frontiers of managerial and organizational cognition research, addresses the challenges we face, aims to inspire other scholars, and provide guidance on how to proceed.

The world perceived at the visual level is constituted not by objects or static forms, but by processes appearing imbued with meaning. As G. Kanizsa stated, at the visual level the line per se does not exist: only the line which enters, goes behind, divides, etc., a line evolving according to a precise holistic context, in comparison with which function and meaning are indissolubly interlinked. Just as the meaning of words is connected with a universe of highly-dynamic functions and functional processes which operate syntheses, cancellations, integrations, etc. (a universe which can only be described in terms of symbolic dynamics), in the same way, at the level of vision, we must continuously unravel and construct schemata; we must assimilate and make ourselves available for selection by the co-ordinated information penetrating from external Reality. Lastly, we must interrelate all this with the internal selection mechanisms through a precise "journey" into the regions of intensionality. In accordance with these intuitions, we may directly consider, from the more general point of view of contemporary Self-organisation theory, the network of meaningful programs living at the level of neural systems as a complex one which articulates and develops, functionally, within a "coupled universe" characterised by the existence of a double selection: external and internal, the latter regarding the universe of meaning. This network gradually posits itself as the basis for the emergence of natural and meaningful forms and the simultaneous, if indirect, surfacing of an "I-subject-": as the basic instrument, in other words, for the perception of real and meaningful processes, of "objects" possessing meaning, aims, intentions, etc.: above all, of biological objects possessing an inner plan and linked to the progressive expression of a specific cognitive action.

David Klahr suggests that we now know enough about cognition--and hence about everyday thinking--to advance our understanding of scientific thinking.