Reading, Rowing, Quilting, Knowing:

Cognitive Science as Recurring Function, not Intersection

Jaime Church

Introduction

I am going to state some presumptions I have unknowingly made about common disciplines and associated definitions while in undergrad, and how these presumptions have been muddling my understanding of cognitive science. My primary presumption was that being correct and being accurate are synonymous. And that for something to be extremely accurate, it must have some degree of detail. In other words, more detail means more accuracy, and the more accurate, the more correct. 

My confidence in the logic of that argument has dwindled the past few months. As I read about the formations, applications, and importance of cognitive science, my attempts to define it grow more vague as I am made privy to more detail the definition needs to encompass. I am motivated to write my own definition of cognitive science, because I find the word “interdisciplinary” to be an underwhelming adjective when it comes to communicating the extent of beautiful, surprising, and nuanced connections that are found within computer science, design, linguistics, anatomy, and other heavy hitters in the cognitive science world. This process is equal parts confusing, humbling, and exciting. 

In reading Thinking Fast and Slow, I read about plausibility and probability, and their associations with our causal and statistical analysis of facts. The book reminds the reader that a more detailed version of a general category is statistically less likely to happen than a less detailed version of the same category. Author Daniel Kahneman also demonstrates–through various studies conducted alongside Amos Tversky–that the more detailed version of a story can appeal to our instinctive inclination to analyze facts in a causal manner, leading the majority of individuals to disregard the statistics involved entirely. 

Reading that had quite the impression on me and how I have been going about defining cognitive science, as I realized I’ve been trying to merge two things that cannot co-exist.

1. Statistically speaking, examples of systems and designs involving cognitive science are going to diminish as the definition becomes more narrow. The same logic applies to definitions: every additional specification a definition adds is a predicate that shrinks the set of things satisfying it. 

2. I am aiming to write a definition of cognitive science that is as detailed as the number of instances in which it arises. Given that core aspects of cognitive science such as principles of intelligence or functions of patterns are multi-realizable, this number is enormous. 

So the definition of cognitive science cannot be narrow, because if it was, it would restrict some disciplines from having examples, which I am arguing cannot happen. The problem is that when the definition of a discipline becomes so large and encompassing, it loses distinct or individualistic qualities that might otherwise draw an individual to a certain discipline in the first place. I didn’t like the way cognitive science was being taught, because it was avoiding detail in its definition as a way to preserve accuracy. Details, however, are what draw us in. I have grown to think of it in the same way I think of books. Authors aren’t inspired by “literature,” so much as one author might be inspired by Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. And even then, said author probably isn’t inspired by the novel in general so much as they are specific haunting prose and the emotional churning that arises from such complicated characters. So saying an author is inspired by the moral dilemmas faced by Victor Frankenstein and how these dilemmas sink into their heart is probably more accurate than saying they are merely inspired by “literature.” However the definition of literature could never be represented by something so specific, lest it exclude all the other novels and emotions and stylistic approaches that are just as much a part of the literary world as Frankenstein. 

Cognitive science is the same. It is not so much the interdisciplinary world of humans and computers as it is how a desk is designed. Or how a rowing crew manages to row as one. Or how artificial intelligence mimics the brain. It is all of these things, but the definition will include none of them. I am far from adequately articulating just what about the study of cognitive science is so intriguing and important. But between my undergraduate education and my own reading lists, I have an idea where to start. What is cognitive science if not recursive patterns, algorithms, languages, and neuroanatomy? What are these things if not detailed? What are humans if not detailed? What is cognitive science if not primarily concerned with the thought process of humans? Being a cognitive scientist means one is a generalist of many disciplines as a byproduct of attempting to be a specialist in many.