ABSTRACT
William James (1890/1983) argued that a degree of vagueness can be beneficial to science when attempting new research directions. A strikingly similar opinion was vented by Marvin Minsky a century later: It often does more harm than good to force definitions on things we don’t understand. Besides, only in logic and mathematics do definitions ever capture concepts perfectly. The fact that both opinions were set forth by students of cognition is perhaps no coincidence. Different conceptual aspects have come to be crystallized within the current definition of cognition through a convoluted and blurry path, in common usage, in philosophy, as well as in psychological theorizing. The first is a process: cognition as something that humans do (along with several other animals). The second is a product: cognitions as mental representations that surface to consciousness when we perceive, reason, or form mental images. Cognition is not merely a process, but a “mental” process.
