COGNITION, EMOTION AND CONSCIOUSNESS: ACCORDING TO PAUL THAGARD'S APPROACH

Abstract

The field of Cognitive Science has shown, over the last decades, broad development in the understanding and modeling of mental processes. Based on two principles, the notion of representation and the analogy between mental processes and computational processes, contemporary Cognitive Science has developed in order to overcome the difficulties imposed by the scientific approach to mental states. The first, the notion of representation, allowed the formalization of the contents of mental activity within a theoretical framework. The second computational modeling provided the construction of scientific evidence through analogies between experimental data and computational models. However, even considering all these advantages made possible by the approach, some difficulties still persist. The biggest one, evidenced over the years, is the explanation or consideration of the role played by emotions and conscious experience. The challenge is posed as follows: both our emotions and our conscious perceptions appear to play a fundamental role in various cognitive processes, however, they are not taken into account by the approach. Thus, the present work will seek to present an overview of research under the scope of CRUM, in order to expand and supplement the theoretical computational terms, accommodating the role played by emotions and conscious experience.