Abstract
Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the mind that originated in the mid-1950s and draws on insights and techniques from psychology, linguistics, philosophy, computer science, and related disciplines. It can be defined more
specifically as the study of the representations that are used by the mind, and the computational processes that operate over those representations. For example, Lepore and
Pylyshyn (1999: vii) write: “The approach in cognitive science is . . . essentially computational; the capacity for intelligence is viewed in this discipline as arising from the
processing of representations” (see also Wilson and Keil 1999: xxviii; Fodor 2000: 4).
In essence, it is dedicated to pursuing the view that the mind is (at least in part) a kind
of computer.