An Invitation to Cognitive Science

Daniel N. Osherson is at MIT. Eldar Shafir, a student, close friend, and collaborator of Tversky's, is Class of 1987 Professor of Behavioral Science and Public Policy at Princeton University. Amos Tversky (1937-1996) was a mathematical psychologist whose research in the cognitive and decision sciences has been enormously influential. From 1978 to 1996, Tversky taught at Stanford University, where he was the inaugural David-Brack Professor of Behavioral Sciences and Principal Investigator at the Stanford Center on Conflict and Negotiation. Susan Carey is the Henry A. Morss Jr. and Elisabeth W. Morss Professor of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. She is the first woman to receive the 2009 David E. Rumelhart Prize, given annually since 2001 for significant contributions to the theoretical foundation of human cognition. Scott Atran is Research Director in Anthropology at France's National Center for Scientific Research and Visiting Professor of Psychology and Public Policy at the University of Michigan. He is the coeditor, with Douglas Medin, of Folkbiology (MIT Press, 1999). Gilbert Harman is Stuart Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University and the author of Explaining Value and Other Essays in Moral Philosophy and Reasoning, Meaning, and Mind. Keith J. Holyoak, Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles, is a psychologist and poet. He is the coauthor or editor of a number of books on cognitive psychology and has published three volumes of poetry. Lance J. Rips is Professor of Psychology at Northwestern University. Ned Block is Silver Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at New York University and was Chair of the Philosophy Program at MIT from 1990 to 1995. He is a coeditor of The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (MIT Press, 1997).

Part 1 Concepts and reasoning: concepts and categorization, E.E. Smith; probability judgement, D.N. Osherson; decision making, E. Shafir and A. Tversky; continuity and discontinuity in cognitive development, S. Carey; classifying nature across cultures, S. Atran; rationality, G. Harman. Part 2 Problem solving and memory: working memory and thinking, J. Jonides; problem solving, K. Holyoak; deduction and cognition, L. Rips; social cognition - information accessibility and use in social judgement, N. Schwartz; the mind as the software of the brain, N. Block.