Recent Changes in the Concept of Cognition

Abstract

Psychological theory is currently undergoing a change more profound than the `cognitive revolution' of the 1950s and 1960s. The present change involves a reconceptualization of the very concepts of cognition and mind. Cognitive science and cognitive psychology are turning away from the long dominant view of mind as an encapsulated, rational entity, dissociated from the body. In the emergent view the mind is seen as activity in an environment. This action-related reconceptualization of mind involves a break with the long western tradition of rationalism, as well as with a causal, mechanistic approach to psychological phenomena, which can be contrasted with a functional or teleological one.