ABSTRACT
A view of cognitive science as neither one unified cognitive science, nor just a multidisciplinary field of a number of sciences (psychology, AI, linguistics, philosophy, neuroscience etc.) is presented. It is argued that cognitive science is best described as a matrix of three dimensions, a content or domain dimension (e.g., language, problem solving etc, and subsets of these), a levels dimension (from synapse to situated/distributed cognition) and a methods dimension, comprising of three basic approaches to research; empirical, formal, and model building. The latter are seen not only as methods per se, but rather as scientific ‘cultures’; carriers of differing explicit and implicit views of what constitutes ‘good research’. In the final section an application of this view in the design of Cognitive Science education is presented.
