Advances in cognitive science 1

This book, like my own career, has no single theme which connects all of the chapters except a commitment to the study of cognition. I have deliverately avoided collecting these chapters under traditional headings such as artificial intelligence, psychology, linguistics, or philosophy since most of the individual chapters have a foothold in at least two such disciplines. Similarly, I have not sectioned the book into areas like semantic memory, parsing, knowledge-based inference, thought, etc. Rather my intent was to present a selection from first-rate researchers whose work is not firmly constrained by the dogmas of their mother discipline. Each of the contributors in this volume (as well as those who nearly contributed) has influenced my research in cognitive science over the last five or six years as mentor, colleague, friend, neighbour, or some combination. I can find no better motivation for this collection. I offer it to you in the hope that you get some of the excitement out of this blend that I did.