Introduction to Cognitive Science

By: Thad A. Polk, The Great Courses

Narrated by: Thad A. Polk

For millennia, philosophers and scientists have been trying to unlock the secrets of the mind with only limited success—until now. Today, with modern technologies including the best in neuroscience, medical imaging, and recent advances in artificial intelligence, we are making more progress than ever before.

In Introduction to Cognitive Science, Professor Thad A. Polk takes you on a fascinating tour of the latest discoveries in the relatively new field of cognitive science. The goal is nothing less than understanding every interaction working in the human brain to produce all forms of cognition. Computer scientists, engineers, linguists, physicians, psychologists, and more are all pursuing the mysteries of the most complex structure in the known universe, the elegant human brain.

But how do we learn about the mechanisms underlying human cognition? Unlike scientists studying other parts of the body, hands-on examination of the brain yields limited results. We can certainly learn about the brain’s structure, but where is the “thinking”? How can we best use our mind to learn about the mind?

In 24 exciting lectures, Professor Polk shares dozens of the most challenging questions in cognitive science today: How do humans process language? How do we make decisions, and why do we so often regret them later? What are emotions, and why do we feel them? How does the brain affect our visual perception of the world? In this course, Professor Polk gives the latest, exciting answers for these questions, and many more.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

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Great narration as always by Thad Polk

I thoroughly enjoyed this. Except the part about AI which I'll never agree to. But everything else is alright. I just don't like AI. I miss the times where our children in or coming out of high school could get a job at a retail store of some kind. Sure they still can but the jobs are fewer and fewer and so impersonal filling out applications online instead of in person. I prefer definition 2 of impersonal. I feel like we don't even really exist as people anymore. Just dollar signs to be exploited. These are just my personal feelings about AI. I miss people. I don't like going to a grocery store and then being pointed in the direction of some machine. Then it's like we've become unpaid employees. Checking ourselves out.

AI is over rated

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to this course. As a retired registered nurse with a masters in public health, I always seek to keep learning. But, the professor seemed delighted with the prospects to be brought to humanity by Ai. However, from my perspective, as Ai seems to thrive on the collective data obtained from users of various technologies, it is at some point going to have the average IQ of the general population according to the normal distribution of IQ or sadly the unprincipled behaviors captured by the data collection that ends on ChatGPT and other Ai tools.
Ai as such will not be smarter than the general population, in my opinion, but it will be more scary. It can take off without the ethical boundaries that make society livable and displace many jobs. The new jobs created won’t be able to sustain a decent living wage for most people. More unemployment and more generated low quality jobs as evidenced by the gig economy vs more industrial and professional jobs.

I appreciate the knowledge imparted by the professor, though.