Defining Cognition

Professor Marc Hauser defines cognition as a way of processing information about the world. He includes emotion as a cognitive process.

Cognition as a word, to me, means a way of processing information that in some sense is neutral in terms of the content. So, when I think, I am being a cognitive creature. Some people make a distinction between cognition and emotion. I don’t think that is necessarily a good distinction. I think when we have emotions and feelings, like anger and fear, we’ve processed things from the environment, like we see a snake and we’re afraid, we see someone we love and we are attracted to them. In the same sense, that way all of it is cognition, it’s part of what the brain does to process information and gives us a way of behaving with the world.