Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
1.1 Cognitive Problem Development
Cognitive subjects are of interest to various scientific disciplines stemming from
different theoretical and methodological traditions. Cognitive science is very often
understood as the science of learning and is therefore identified with the cognitive
theory. Cognitive theories started developing with the introduction of the philoso-
phical cognitive theory - epistemology [158]. Representatives of epistemology fo-
cused their work on fundamental problems of human learning, which included the
sources and the nature of knowledge acquired as well as the theory of the truth.
Thus epistemology dealt with the human cognition, and in particular its:
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subject - everything that exists, every object or being that can be known in a
way concerning an individual person, but also 'discovered'; whose properties,
individual features, meaning etc. can be seen;
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content - the meaning of the object or being learned about (its semantics);
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processes - related to learning, the definition of a given concept, the definition
of signs that can be assigned to given objects, creating analogies, selecting the
language, formulating judgments on the objects (beings) learned about etc.
methods;
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limits;
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criteria.
Cognitive theory was at the beginning developed as a speculative science sup-
ported by logic and everyday observations. However, as time passed, it increas-
ingly started to use the achievements of philosophy, psychology, medicine, lin-
guistics and also informatics. Cognitive science, as the science of learning, started
focusing on a special field of science - the philosophy of the brain, which then
studied the classical psycho-physical problem originally defined as the relation-
ship between the tangible body and the intangible soul, later understood as the re-
lationship between the brain and conscience. At the time, cognitive theory concen-
trated on matters explaining how the brain can generate conscious conditions of
the psyche and on determining the function and the origin of qualia - qualitatively
individual, subjective states of consciousness.
In addition, in-depth observations were made of the expression of emotions in
people and the phenomenon of emotions arising from the perspective of the hu-
man evolution. Foundations were laid for the development of a scientific disci-
pline based on researching the phenomenon of emotions in a fashion that would
open the way to studying it experimentally, and scientists wrote about the signifi-
cance and the role of emotions for psychopathology.
The issue of emotions and the entire phenomenon connected with them had a
huge impact on the appearance of two existence models of mental processes - the
neuro-physiological and the perception model. Each one of them is present in the
human brain to a greater or smaller extent and is based on emotional states trig-
gered earlier, starting at the initial phases of the cognitive analysis process. For
many years, at many scientific centres world-wide, research was carried out on the
