George Miller

Cognition has become fashionable. Half a dozen academic disciplines are currently scrambling to establish ownership. The philosophers, who got there first, are being jostled by empiricists, but are relaxing none of their traditional claims. To psychologists, cognition is a ‘problem’ that only they can analyse experimentally. Social anthropologists feel that their concern for culture gives them some special claim to cognition. Computer scientists who create artificially intelligent systems now freely define cognition in their own likeness. Special cognitive intuitions about language provide basic data for linguists. Even neuroscientists now speak of cognitive brain processes. All put forward their favourite entitlements.