Cognition

Before psychology existed as a scientific discipline, the study of cognition was the domain of philosophy. There are two fundamental scientific paradigms-with many variations-regarding cognition in Western philosophy: idealism and empiricism. According to idealistic view, represented by such thinkers as Plato (c. 427-347 B.C.) and René Descartes (1596-1650), innate ideas are the crucial component in cognition; in other words, knowledge is determined by what has been in an individ ual's mind since-or before-birth. The opposing, empiricist view, is succinctly expressed by John Locke's (1632-1704) dictum that, without sense-perceptions, the mind is an empty slate, a tabula rasa. While certain psychologists struggled to determine which of the two paradigms was dominant, the celebrated Swiss cognitive psychologist Jean Piaget (1896-1980) developed a theoretical model of cognition which recognized the importance of both the innate/genetic and the empirical components of cognition. It could be said that cognition depends on both components, just as the successful operation of a computer program requires both the hardware and the software.