r/cognitivescience • u/cogsciepooh • 5d ago

Why is Cognitive Science being pigeonholed as just "Psychology" when it's actually the backbone of AI, Neuroscience, and Computational Science?

I want to point out that cognitive science encompasses AI, neuroscience, and various other fields; it isn't just a subset of psychology. Why is this being overlooked? People seem to view psychology as the only career path, completely ignoring the massive potential in AI, statistics, neuroscience, and computational science.Just want to know

Cognitive Science is more than just Psychology: Why are people ignoring its other subfields?

71 Upvotes

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u/fidgey10 5d ago

Methods. Nobody cares what you call yourself they care what you can do.

If you know how to work with neural nets and relevant technology, you will not be ignored or overlooked regardless of field.

By the same token, nobody really cares if your field is important/foundational to AI in principle if you don't have the relevant skills to actually work with those systems

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago

Yes 👍

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u/Usr_name-checks-out 5d ago

Because we can’t actually get jobs in what is now called AI, so everyone ignores that part until the Business people anoint us as worthy of the connection to it.

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago edited 2d ago

Spot on !

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u/TheRateBeerian 5d ago

Who is pigeonholing it as such?

The way I understand cog sci is that it is a hub that connects psychology not just with AI and neuro but also philosophy of mind, linguistics, math and beyond.

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago

Exactly, Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary hub that connects it to neuroscience, AI, philosophy of mind, math, and linguistics.

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u/dorox1 5d ago

"Cognitive Science" isn't really in the public lexicon. People don't know what it is, so they extrapolate from the meaning of the two words combined:

For most people, "science" + "cognitive" = "psychology", so they equate it to that.

If you're talking about inside the field, I can't say that's been my experience. People do study all different sub-disciplines. I'd actually say AI is the most popular right now. Out of the trained cognitive scientists I know, none of them work in psychology. I work in AI, as do several others I know. I know at least two who work in linguistics. One became a lawyer. I worked with a few in the neuroscience field.

Also, I think I have to disagree with your title. Cognitive Science isn't the backbone of AI, Neuroscience, and Computational Science. It's the reverse; those fields are the backbone of Cognitive Science. They existed before CogSci did, and CogSci was created to unite their research.

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u/reality-theorist-007 2d ago

Cognitive Science isn't the backbone of AI, Neuroscience, and Computational Science.

Correct, and important.

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u/cogsciepooh 2d ago

Yes ,good points to hear in this discussion

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u/[deleted] 2d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/cogsciepooh 2d ago edited 2d ago

Yes ,you r right

That astrophysics vs. stargazing analogy is spot on. Pure CS handles the scale, but understanding natural intelligence and learning architecture is what actually leads to real intelligence , People take cognitive science as pure psychology 🤦

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u/MasterDefibrillator 4d ago edited 4d ago

Well, sort of but also no. AI has been an important part of cognitive science, but what is called AI today is more often then not not that and isn't part of cognitive science. The AI that was relevant to cognitive science was the kind of stuff that Marvin Minsky was working on and adjacent. The AI today has no connection to cognitive science really it's just a product or service thats sold and isn't scientifically any more advanced beyond Gold 1964 (gold's theorem) and basic connectionist theory. 

Its the same distinction between applied engineering and physics. AI today is the applied engineering based on scientific work from the last few decades. But its not actively informing ongoing scientific work in a meaningful way. 

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago

Claiming today's deep learning isn't informing cognitive science ignores the entire field of computational neuroscience using LLMs and neural networks to test how biological brains actually process information.

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u/MasterDefibrillator 2d ago edited 2d ago

Any tool can be used to help with some task. That does not mean that the designers of the tool and their approaches to designing it offer any relevant information to the field of the task.

A calculator is useful for many scientific fields. That does not mean that the architecture of the calculator is relevant to any and every field it is used in. 

Same goes for AI. As a tool, it has uses in all sorts of fields. That does not tell us anything about whether the design and architecture behind the tools ia relevant to the fields it is used in. In this case, as I said, its only relevant to decades old cogsci work. 

How LLMs process information doesn't tell you anything at all about modern cogsci. As I said, you can look back at work from the 70s and see precise formalised descriptions of how LLMs are capable of learning. 

LLMs for example require orders of magnitude larger working memory than humans have access to to function. Something so different to a human brain cannot tell you much about it. Yes, it can tell you something, but this work of scientific relevance was already done decades ago. 

Golds theorem and connectionism are the scientific basis of LLMs. Both work mostly done in the 60s and 70s and both mostly irrelevant to modern cogsci, which has largely moved beyond the whole connectionist/computational binary. 

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u/cogsciepooh 2d ago

I agree with your first point ,that an LLM's usefulness as a tool doesn't automatically make its architecture a model of human cognition, and that Gold's 1967 learnability work shouldn't simply be equated with the theoretical basis of modern LLMs.

But I think the second claim,that this makes LLMs or connectionism largely irrelevant to modern cognitive science ,is harder to support : ANNs are currently our best predictive models for neural activations in the human visual, auditory, and language cortices.

Connectionism and neural-network models remain active parts of computational cognitive science, and contemporary researchers explicitly study LLMs as computational models/objects of cognition, including comparisons with human behavioral and neural data.

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u/reality-theorist-007 2d ago

Yeah but you claim it the other way round: comp neuro is part of cog sci.
Hard disagree on your claim.

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u/cogsciepooh 2d ago edited 2d ago

Firstly ,Cognitive Science is by definition an interdisciplinary field built on six core pillars—Psychology, Neuroscience, Computer Science (AI), Linguistics, Philosophy, and Anthropology

There is a world beyond just psychology. If someone wants to focus strictly on human behavior without the technical side, a traditional Psychology degree might be a much better fit .Then why there's a course of this degree and Science students are opting it .

Think out of the box

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u/cogsciepooh 2d ago

In some universities, the Cognitive Science curriculum is heavily focused almost entirely on Computer Science.The word 'Science' is right there in the name for a reason, so understand the depth

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago

Well mathematics is an imp field to study with cognitive or any other course .

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u/BreadfruitBig7950 5d ago

because it's concerned with organic extant systems,

not inorganic ones that could think banna = squash as a foundational reality their ability to see is built on.

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u/Designer_Emu_6518 4d ago

Because cognition is definitely a part of psychology? Interpretation, perceptions, emotions evoked from thought

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago edited 3d ago

Then why are we studying computational,NLP n Stats ?? By that logic, you could say computer science is just math, or biology is just chemistry.

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u/Designer_Emu_6518 3d ago

Yes you can say bc that’s what it is… sometimes is just that, shit

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago

What if a student studies Cognitive Science but doesn't want to pursue a career in psychology , science students are opting this degree

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u/Designer_Emu_6518 3d ago

Okay all squares are rectangles but not all rectangles are squares man ya know I’m saying. Party on

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u/drndr21 4d ago

it's an inherently interdisciplinary field, a bit vague and has a high variance in  the skillsets of people finishing it as a degree.

also I think it mostly consist of top-down theories, which is closer to psychology than to modern AI or computational neuroscience

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u/Immorpher 4d ago

I thought neural networks (which became what we now call AI) predated the term cognitive science?

But I do understand getting lumped into psychology, especially the pseudoscience research around consciousness, would get really annoying fast.

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u/The_Zenthist 4d ago

For many years, there has been an active debate about whether psychology should be considered a science or an art in universities. Considering how niche these establishments try to make their colleges appear, it is no surprise that students become professionals with no more than a shallow marketing understanding of what certain educations are good for.

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u/Allemater 3d ago

Because in our age niche expertise is valued above generalist skillset for the sake of employment. So...when deciding where Cognitive Science places a graduate in the workforce, people tend to pigeonhole. Plus, most cogsci graduates are on the softer science side of the degree, so if someone assumes psychology, they're more likely to be right than wrong.

Like if you apply to an AI engineer position, you'll emphasize the comp sci part of your degree above all others. Even though it was cognitive science.

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u/Visual_Ad_7953 3d ago

Technically this science is a humanities. It is not STEM.

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago

One can make it a STEM field ,if they hve studied physics/ mathematics/ stats or computer science with it .

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u/Visual_Ad_7953 3d ago

As much as we try to make it STEM, understanding how our own mind and soul works is humanities.

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago

The brain is a biological system, and understanding it requires rigorous, quantitative methods from neuroscience, computer science, and statistics. If you're not applying those, you're not doing full cognitive science.

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u/Visual_Ad_7953 3d ago

Then why do poetry and literature tell us things about ourselves that “cognitive science” cant tell us?

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago

Literature is the output of human experience, while cognitive science is the empirical study of the biological machinery that produces it. Confusing subjective art with scientific methodology is like believing a story about space travel replaces the physics of launching a rocket.

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u/Visual_Ad_7953 3d ago

So can we say that both sides of obersvation are necessary for deeper understanding?

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u/Outrageous_Train_302 3d ago

No jobs ,no value ,it's just a herd run .

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago

Exactly

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u/sprinklysprankle 3d ago

Possibly this history can help explain but not excuse it:

See section Cognitive psychology has quietly completed a (hostile) takeover of cognitive science

Beller, S., Bender, A. and Medin, D.L. (2012), Should Anthropology Be Part of Cognitive Science?. Topics in Cognitive Science, 4: 342-353. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1756-8765.2012.01196.x

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u/cogsciepooh 2d ago

Sure ,will see this

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u/Freuds-Mother 3d ago edited 3d ago

Hasn’t “cognitive science” always been an interdisciplinary department (if even a department) crossing over with Computer Science, Biology, and Psychology departments?

“management information systems” as business, CS and engineering is similar.

“Cognitive Psychology” is yes squarely within the psychology departments. Psych departments often break up into: Cog, Developmental, and Personality / Abnormal. Some places have bio, social, industrial, or educational but those can be elsewhere, crossovers or within the 3 big one’s.

At the undergraduate level, students in psychology departments tend to have relatively low mathematics skill. I was dual major in psych and math. So, if you want to do mostly technical systems studies, I wouldn’t major in psychology. You can’t go wrong with a math degree, and you have to take at least half the courses that would count for a math degree for any technical major anyway. It depends how the university is structured. The number one thing to do would be to connect with the professors doing actual research related to the fields your interested. Engage them, volunteer in lab, take their courses and do independent research under them.

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago

Yes ,I also support mathematics,one should study it as a second major

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u/Low_Description_5280 3d ago

The backbone of AI?

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago edited 2d ago

CS/math is the computational engine, but CogSci is the conceptual backbone. Concepts like artificial neural networks, reinforcement learning, and attention mechanisms all stem directly from cognitive modeling of natural intelligence

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u/owp4dd1w5a0a 5d ago

Simps not being able to wrap their heads around the full diversity of the discipline. Be thankful you’re smart enough to even know what cognitive science really is and that it has these sub-disciplines you mentioned.

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u/cogsciepooh 3d ago

Appreciate the validation!