Page 4 - Foundations of Cognitive Psychology : Core Readings

Preface xv

The particular readings included here owe their evolution to a course I taught
at the University of California at Berkeley in the fall of 1999, ‘‘Fundamental
Issues in Cognitive Science.’’ The readings for that course had been carefully
honed over ten years by Stephen Palmer and Alison Gopnik, outstanding
teachers whose courses are motivated by an understanding of the philosophical
basis for contemporary cognitive psychology. I had never seen cognitive psy-
chology taught this way, but once I did I couldn’t imagine teaching it any other
way. A fundamental assumption I share with them is that cognitive psychology
is in many respects empirical philosophy. By that I mean that the core questions
in cognitive psychology were for centuries considered the domain of philoso-
phers. Some of these questions include: What is the nature of thought? Does
language influence thought? Are memories and perceptions accurate? How can
we ever know if other people are conscious?
Aristotle was the first information-processing theorist, and without exaggera-
tion one can argue that modern cognitive psychology owes him its heritage.
Descartes launched modern approaches to these questions, and much current
debate references his work. But for Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Locke, Husserl,
and others, the questions remained in the realm of philosophy. A century and
a half ago this all changed when Wundt, Fechner, Helmholtz, and their cohorts
established the first laboratories in which they employed empirical methods to
probe what had previously been impenetrable to true science: the mind. Philos-
ophers framed the questions, and mental scientists (as they were then some-
times called) conducted experiments to answer them.
Today, the empirical work that interests me most in the field of Cognition is
theory-driven and builds on these philosophical foundations. And a new group
of philosophers, philosophers of mind, closely monitor the progress made by
cognitive psychologists in order to interpret and debate their findings and to
place them in a larger context.

Who Is This For?
The book you have before you is intended to be used as a text for the under-
graduate cognitive psychology class I teach at McGill University. I hope that
others will find some value in it as well. It should also be suitable for students
who wish to acquaint themselves through self-study with important ideas in
cognition. The ambitious student or professor may want to use this to sup-
plement a regular textbook as a way to add other perspectives on the topics
covered. It may also be of use to researchers as a resource that gathers up key
articles in one place. It presupposes a solid background in introductory psy-
chology and research methods. Students should have encountered most of these
topics previously, and this book gives them an opportunity to explore them
more deeply.

How the Book Is Organized and How It Differs from Other Books

The articles in this reader are organized thematically around topics tradition-
ally found in a course on cognitive psychology or cognitive science at the uni-