1.1 The Connotation and Extension of Cognitive Systems 5
further summarized this view into five main types of cog-
nitive performance. First, cognition is the process of infor-
mation processing. Secondly, cognition is the process of
thinking. Thirdly, cognition is the psychology of symbolic
operations. Fourthly, cognition is the solution to problems.
Lastly, cognition is a group of related activities such as per-
ception, thinking, learning, memory, judgment, reasoning,
problem solving, concept formation, imagination, and lan-
guage using, among others.
(2) Philosophical definition
Philosophy defines cognition from four levels. Firstly, cog-
nition is the activity of human beings to understand objec-
tive things and acquire knowledge. Secondly, cognition is
the process of human perception, memory, learning, speech,
thinking, and problem solving. Thirdly, as the process of
active processing, cognition can be expressed as goals,
beliefs, knowledge and perception, and calculations that per-
form operations on these representations. Lastly, cognition
is the answer to the questions “What? Who? When? Where?
How?.”
(3) Linguistic definition
Linguistics defines cognition based on the unique role of
language in cognition: cognition is the process of human lan-
guage processing. The definition summarizes the relation-
ship between language and cognition from four levels. First,
cognition is the cause of human language. Secondly, lan-
guage is the object of human cognition. Thirdly, language
is the expression of human cognition. Lastly, the develop-
ment of cognition drives the development and progress of
language.
(4) Computer definition
Computer science gives a simple and profound definition of
cognition from a computational perspective: cognition is a
computation of the brain. Computer science proposes such
a definition because the human brain and the computer are
very different in hardware and software, but at the level
of computational theory, they all have the ability to gener-
ate, manipulate, and process abstract symbols as a system of
information calculations.
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