The roots of modern cognitive science can be found in the linguistics and the computer science of the 1950s. Cognitive science is emerging as a required new area for academic training. Thus, cognitive science is really asking what it means to be human. Humans excel over computers in many domains. Scientifically sound theory of cognition should shed light on human decisions, and this could have sociopolitical impact.
Human cognition is so complicated that only small pieces of it can be investigated at a time.
A key theme of the volumes is Marr's tri-level hypothesis, which is also a major theme of the course. We shall see that as soon as this type of assumption is adopted, the three level hypothesis applies.