The most recommended books on cognition

Cobb's Ecology of Imagination is tough sledding. It's academic, abstruse, and also remarkably insightful. I still don't understand all of what she's saying, but what I do understand is her portrayal of the importance of middle childhood, "between the strivings of animal infancy and the storms of adolescence—when the natural world is experienced in some highly evocative way, producing in the child a sense of some profound continuity with natural processes….” Our goal, as parents, should be to find ways for our children to feel that "profound continuity with natural processes" during the middle childhood years of ages six to twelve. 

I was struck at the time, reading The Dyslexic Advantage, by the detail and nuance Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide presented about many of the common strengths of dyslexic brains.

Dyslexia, like other forms of neurodivergence, has typically been seen in (only) a negative light – yet many famous and successful business people are dyslexic, and credit this with their success. Indeed, a study in 2006 found that as many as a third of all entrepreneurs are dyslexic!

In a business world reliant on innovative thinking, The Dyslexic Advantage highlights the multiple attributes of dyslexic thinkers – from insight to pattern matching – and makes an overwhelming case for the (better) inclusion of dyslexic thinkers in society and at work. 

Lee covers and connects two of my favorite topics, creativity, and technology. From the facts and truths of technology to the role models play in creativity (looking at how early philosophers suggested modeling thought), he argues that computers are not universal machines and that their power comes from their partnership with humans.

This is it. The Bible of the Mind. The Codex of Consciousness. The Scroll of the Soul. Stephen Grossberg’s masterwork is a comprehensive mathematical account of human cognition.

Pick any part of the brain, any mental function—a sodium channel, a pyramidal neuron, a circadian circuit, a cerebellar lobe, audio recognition, hate, melodic preferences, linguistic meaning, throwing a spear at a target, visual memory, schizophrenia, free will—and Dr. Grossberg has put math to it. You’ll find that math in this book.

But be forewarned: this book is very, very, very challenging. The math isn’t derived from some other field of science. Because consciousness is not a subset of electromagnetism or a variety of planetary orbit. Consciousness is its own unique thing in the cosmos, and demands its own unique math.

Sophisticated, ornery math. Inaccessible math for most of us, sadly, but if you want to take a shot at the Finnegan’s… show more.

It’s impossible, as a parent, not to marvel at the miracle of learning that occurs in very young children. Indeed, parents have experienced this sense of awe for time immemorial, and some have gone so far as to venture explanations for how it works. John Dewey, the American philosopher and psychologist, argued at the dawn of the twentieth century that children are like young scientists as they go about their day, subtly testing the things and people around them to see how they work. We now know, in no small part due to the work of researchers including The Scientist in the Crib author Alison Gopnik, that Dewey was right. Children are compelled to experiment; what’s more, they make the most of the limited data they produce with a powerful logic invisible to the untrained eye. Parents—but also anyone with a sense of wonder—will find answers to deep mysteries in… show more.

I loved this book because I remembered loving it. But why did I remember? What do I forget—and why? What is the function of memory? How do we unknowingly change our own narrative—and why?

I have always been fascinated by cognitive neuroscience. Thinking about how we think, what we think about, why we remember what we remember, and why we forget what we forget has always fascinated me. These are all things that we take for granted until something happens that changes our perception. We are constantly creating and editing our own narrative. From fond memories to trauma, memory is affected, as is our life narrative. It’s too early to tell if this book will be memorable to me, but I loved reading it. 

Thanks to Freud, one of the most cherished ideas in psychology is that we have an unconscious. Yet because it is by definition inaccessible, our unconscious is almost impossible to study scientifically. Freud himself certainly didn’t provide much reliable evidence for its existence. Nick Chater, a respected researcher of language and perception, argues that little if any evidence for an unconscious drive exists even now, almost a century after Freud. With lively and pugnacious arguments drawn from fascinating and diverse discoveries about language and perception, Chater deconstructs the unconscious and argues instead for a human mind that is inherently dynamic and in-the-moment. When I have assigned this book to my undergraduate students studying perception it has provoked some of the most heated debates, which is how I know it is a great book!

Are you stewing about regrets, disappointments, and perceived “mistakes” you’ve made? It’s hard to treat yourself well if you are berating yourself for things you did or didn’t do in the past. This book guides you through proven tools to process what happened. It will help you let go of resentments so you can move on with your life. Once you let go, you can treat yourself better.

The Scout Mindset is one of the best books I know on reasoning clearly and developing a truth-seeking attitude. Galef argues that instead of being like “soldiers,” who engage in wishful thinking by defending the ideas they most want to believe, we should be more like “scouts,” whose goal is to actually find out what is true. The book includes some of the latest research on the skills and habits one needs to be an excellent reasoner. 

This is a recommendation for those who want to go into a bit more depth with metaphor. The book is an edited collection of chapters written by experts who explore how metaphor constructs our reality, looking at metaphor as forms of language, and metaphor as forms of mental representation. Admittedly, there’s a little more jargon in this one, but the chapters are an excellent starting point for reflecting on the applications and implications of the way we talk and why it matters.