In science, cognition is a group of mental processes that includes attention, memory, producing and understanding language, solving problems, and making decisions. Cognition is studied in various disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, linguistics, science and computer science. The term's usage varies in different disciplines; for example in psychology and cognitive science, it usually refers to an information processing view of an individual's psychological functions. It is also used in a branch of social psychology called social cognition to explain attitudes, attribution, and groups dynamics.
There are three level of cognition: The first level is cognition and then follows the metacognition and the highest level is epistemic cognition.
You can see it in the following picture:
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| cognition process |
Low-level cognitive are those of the different kinds of basic information processing elements (neurons) and the structure and internal processing organisation of the neural networking in the human brain. These functions are the basic enablers of the functions of the higher levels.
Then we turn to second levels - metacognition.Most people can reach the second level and it's hard to go further because epistemic cognition needs more times and energy.
Here is a kind of interesting description of three levels:
The first stage: the mountain is the mountain, water is water. This is the understanding of the whole superficial general knowledge and things on the surface, on the external characteristics.
Second stage: Mountain is non-mountain, water is non-water. With careful analysis, we can understanding the various parts of the various properties. Clear the characteristics and properties of the various parts of this things and things with it, it is part of the relationship between What are the similarities and differences. Because we focus on part of the things ,various attributes of things, so it is not the thing itself, in our eyes it is not the original thing.
Third stage: Mountain is still mountain, water is still water. Reason why a thing is that thing, because it has the experience back to the details of things and understanding the whole thing back to the attributes of the essence of things, and different from other things in essential attribute. They are still that things. But this time people see things in a rich connotation, both as a whole and part, both external and internal.
This kind of description of the three levels is so interesting and helps us dig into these concepts. In the highest level, epistemic cognition, we can observe the connotation of an object, both externally and internally, but it is also the hardest one to handle proficiently.
回复删除Yeah that's right. And the modern social media try to occupy people's spare time and that make most of our cognition become chip. That makes epistemic cognition become very hard nowadays.
删除Third stage: mountain is still mountain, water is still water. In my opinion, the reason is not only we hold the overview of things from whole to part, and external to internal, but also we have already had subjective cognition in the process. Moreover, we have the ability to distinguish, make a decision, or bring about some thing new. After that, we might believe mountain is still mountain, water is still water. You know the third stage is always too hard to catch.
回复删除The third stage need time and talent to arrive. We don't need to get to the third level every time because it's not necessary and not even possible. Master degree only make you become a master in one area and we can't be a expert anytime.
删除It's very funny you view from this aspect. Even though the description is more like the state of life, I think this could be a kind of understanding.
回复删除There are many questions not just as black or white, so different people may have different understanding from different point of views.
I think sometime the description could up to philosophy degree because philosophy is above the specific science. Don't you think my explain is more interesting and easy to understand than the book things?
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