Michael R.W. Dawson

Mind, Body, World: Foundations of Cognitive Science - OPEL: Open Paths to Enriched Learning Michael R.W. Dawson

Cognitive science arose in the 1950s when it became apparent that a
number of disciplines, including psychology, computer science,
linguistics, and philosophy, were fragmenting. Perhaps owing to the
field's immediate origins in cybernetics, as well as to the
foundational assumption that cognition is information processing,
cognitive science initially seemed more unified than psychology.
However, as a result of differing interpretations of the foundational
assumption and dramatically divergent views of the meaning of the term
information processing, three separate schools emerged:
classical cognitive science, connectionist cognitive science, and
embodied cognitive science.

Examples, cases, and research findings taken from the wide range of
phenomena studied by cognitive scientists effectively explain and
explore the relationship among the three perspectives. Intended to
introduce both graduate and senior undergraduate students to the
foundations of cognitive science, Mind, Body, World addresses
a number of questions currently being asked by those practicing in the
field: What are the core assumptions of the three different schools?
What are the relationships between these different sets of core
assumptions? Is there only one cognitive science, or are there many
different cognitive sciences? Giving the schools equal treatment and
displaying a broad and deep understanding of the field, Dawson
highlights the fundamental tensions and lines of fragmentation that
exist among the schools and provides a refreshing and unifying
framework for students of cognitive science.Michael R. W. Dawson is a professor of psychology at
the University of Alberta. He is the author of numerous scientific
papers as well as the books Understanding Cognitive Science
(1998), Minds and Machines (2004), Connectionism: A
Hands-on Approach (2005), and From Bricks to Brains: The
Embodied Cognitive Science of LEGO Robots (2010).