Preface |
ABSTRACT Introductions to cognitive science do not include the study of communication among the disciplines that form its network of researchers. The "disciplines" mentioned are usually cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, and anthropology. However, as Stenning, Lascarides, and Calder note: "There is not much in the way of human doings that does not involve communication, or cannot be construed as communication—very little that can be understood without understanding some communication." The question thus arises: can communication scholars contribute to research on the mind? The Communication as a Cognitive Science section of C-CS answers this question positively. Since cognitive scientists recognize the need to study the mind as it is situated in experience, the fact that communication studies already researches communication situations makes it an ideal contributor to CS. |
Introductions to cognitive science (CS)* do not include the study of communication among the disciplines that form its network of researchers. Since Cognitive Science is widely regarded as the study of how the mind works, texts that offer overviews of it feature research in a variety of fields on the mind. This suggests that Communication scholars do not or cannot conduct research on how the mind works.
The "disciplines"
mentioned are usually cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, and anthropology. While it is easy to understand how the first three disciplines study how the mind works, it is less obvious how the last three—linguistics, philosophy, anthropology—do. Until recently, Chomsky's view of language, which includes the theorem that language is a separate cognitive module, was predominant in cognitive science. More recently, cognitive linguistics—an alternative view of way language is linked to cognition—has been included. Various aspects of philosophy have contributed to a computational view of the mind—symbolic logic and speech act theory. Both of these fields provide logical structures for describing representations of mental models. Anthropology supplies a cultural context for cognitive science on issues regarding the varience or invarience of cognition.
In their Introduction to Cognition and Communication, Keith Stenning (Informatics), Alex Lascarides (Computational Linguistics), and Jo Calder (Mekon Ltd.) note that: "There is not much in the way of human doings that does not involve communication, or cannot be construed as communication—very little that can be understood without understanding some communication." (3, italics mine.) However, they do not refer to any research conducted in communication studies.
The question thus arises: can communication scholars contribute to research on the mind? The Communication as a Cognitive Science section of C-CS answers this question positively, arguing that there are many areas of communication research that are already or can appropriately study the operations of the mind in ways that correlate to researches conducted in cognitive science. Moreover, since cognitive scientists are increasingly recognizing the need to study the mind as it is situated in experience,
communication studies provides the framework of a concpetual domain that already researches communication situations. Most of the research in communication studies is related to the exigencies of the situation in which communication takes place. What is missing is relating this research to cognitive science research.
.The first part of this section of C-CS looks at texts by cognitive scientists that offer overviews of the discipline. Then the next several entries look at representations of cognition. This lead to a group of entries concerned with modes of cognition and representation. Taking Paul Thagard's view of the controversies in cognitive science and his recommendations for resolving them, the entries suggest various ways in which the study of communication can contribute, particularly by studying modes of expression tied to particular situations. This unit of entries leads to considerations of three modes of expression related to the need for necessary, probable, and possible mental models of experience. These three modes are prototypes of cognitive expressions revealed in discursive patterns not as yet explored in cognitive linguistics (which focuses on lower levels of expression, words, phrases, sentences).
The section concludes with the proposal that explaining, justifying, and configuring are distinctive modes of thought governed by communication situations that call for them. The last entry in this section attempts to draw a conceptual map of the domain of communication science.
jjs
*Throughout this section of C-CS, cognitive science is abbreviated to "CS."
Notes:
. The term "discipline" is redefined in C-CS and is not used in its customary sense. See "discipline." ... 
. In his Mind, Paul Thagard argues that several of the challenges to the computational model of the mind show that it "needs to be expanded and supplemented, particularly in ways that integrate it with biological and social factors" (141). His view is echoed by other cognitive scientists, e.g., Michael Dawson, Friedenberg & Silverman, Stenning, Lascarides, & Calder..
. Communication studies as presently conceived usually focus unilaterally on expressions in situations without considering that modes of expression are the representations of modes of cognition. There is nothing to prevent them from extending the work of cognitive linguists in the area of discourse, especially since discourse analysis is a prominent method in the field.
The focus in this entry on the necessary, probable, and possible modes of expression merely identifies points on a spectrum by analogy to red, green, and blue in the color spectrum. It is not an argument that these are the only cognitive modes.
The resulting overlap between cognitive linguistics and communication studies is a non-issue since work in cognitive science is conducted by interdisciplinary teams whose disciplinary identity merge. ...
← previous | next →
last revised:
September 13, 2007
Send comments to jjs.
copyright © jjs, 2007