If somebody can recommend a superior alternative, we’ll be delighted to update the reading list!
A major problem here is that cognitive science covers such a broad area that any “general book of cognitive science” will either have to leave large gaps in its coverage, or have such brief coverage of every topic that they become superficial enough to be useless. AI, theoretical computer science, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of mind, linguistics… these are all fields that a proper summary of cognitive science should talk about, and within each you’ll find several relevant subfields, to boot.
Given that state of affairs, I don’t think that it’s very useful to look for a “general cognitive science textbook”—one would be better off listing cogsci-oriented introductory textbooks to the different subfields that I mentioned. I can mention some of the ones that my university’s cogsci program used and which I thought were good:
Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s Handbook is an invaluable resource, packed full of theories of mental phenomena like visual perception, object recognition, attention, learning and memory, concepts and categories, language comprehension, language production, creativity, and reasoning. It tends to be quite even-handed when there exist several competing theories, pointing out their various strengths and weaknesses. (As an undergraduate cramming for an exam, this gave me headaches, since this style is much less “just memorize it all”-friendly than traditional textbooks.) Note that my experience is with the fifth edition, while the Amazon link is to the sixth, but I don’t expect the quality to have worsened.
Goldstein’s Sensation and Perception is a very nice introduction to the way that data from the various senses is processed in the brain. Of particular LW relevance is that it does hammer home the fact that the map is not the territory, as it becomes quite clear that the sensory data that we perceive is the result of rather extensive processing. (Again, my experience is with a slightly older edition.)
Introduction to Connectionist Modelling of Cognitive Processes was a fantastic introduction to the topic, though it’s a bit old. On the other hand, since it essentially discusses mathematical models, the models themselves don’t stop being valid math even when time goes by, and understanding them will still be useful in understanding more recent models. I’ve covered it previously.
A major problem here is that cognitive science covers such a broad area that any “general book of cognitive science” will either have to leave large gaps in its coverage, or have such brief coverage of every topic that they become superficial enough to be useless. AI, theoretical computer science, neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of mind, linguistics… these are all fields that a proper summary of cognitive science should talk about, and within each you’ll find several relevant subfields, to boot.
Given that state of affairs, I don’t think that it’s very useful to look for a “general cognitive science textbook”—one would be better off listing cogsci-oriented introductory textbooks to the different subfields that I mentioned. I can mention some of the ones that my university’s cogsci program used and which I thought were good:
Cognitive Psychology: A Student’s Handbook is an invaluable resource, packed full of theories of mental phenomena like visual perception, object recognition, attention, learning and memory, concepts and categories, language comprehension, language production, creativity, and reasoning. It tends to be quite even-handed when there exist several competing theories, pointing out their various strengths and weaknesses. (As an undergraduate cramming for an exam, this gave me headaches, since this style is much less “just memorize it all”-friendly than traditional textbooks.) Note that my experience is with the fifth edition, while the Amazon link is to the sixth, but I don’t expect the quality to have worsened.
Goldstein’s Sensation and Perception is a very nice introduction to the way that data from the various senses is processed in the brain. Of particular LW relevance is that it does hammer home the fact that the map is not the territory, as it becomes quite clear that the sensory data that we perceive is the result of rather extensive processing. (Again, my experience is with a slightly older edition.)
Introduction to Connectionist Modelling of Cognitive Processes was a fantastic introduction to the topic, though it’s a bit old. On the other hand, since it essentially discusses mathematical models, the models themselves don’t stop being valid math even when time goes by, and understanding them will still be useful in understanding more recent models. I’ve covered it previously.
If you want a historical look into cognitive science, Minds, Brains, and Computers: An Historical Introduction to the Foundations of Cognitive Science is an anthology with several classic cogsci papers from over the years. Probably not worth reading if one is only interested in the state of cogsci as it exists today, however.