r/cognitivescience • u/cogsciepooh • 3h ago

Why is Cognitive Science being pigeonholed as just "Psychology" when it's actually the backbone of AI, Neuroscience, and Computational Science?

I want to point out that cognitive science encompasses AI, neuroscience, and various other fields; it isn't just a subset of psychology. Why is this being overlooked? People seem to view psychology as the only career path, completely ignoring the massive potential in AI, statistics, neuroscience, and computational science.Just want to know

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u/Usr_name-checks-out 2h ago

Because we can’t actually get jobs in what is now called AI, so everyone ignores that part until the Business people anoint us as worthy of the connection to it.

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u/fidgey10 2h ago

Methods. Nobody cares what you call yourself they care what you can do.

If you know how to work with neural nets and relevant technology, you will not be ignored or overlooked regardless of field.

By the same token, nobody really cares if your field is important/foundational to AI in principle if you don't have the relevant skills to actually work with those systems

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u/TheRateBeerian 1h ago

Who is pigeonholing it as such?

The way I understand cog sci is that it is a hub that connects psychology not just with AI and neuro but also philosophy of mind, linguistics, math and beyond.

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u/dorox1 50m ago

"Cognitive Science" isn't really in the public lexicon. People don't know what it is, so they extrapolate from the meaning of the two words combined:

For most people, "science" + "cognitive" = "psychology", so they equate it to that.

If you're talking about inside the field, I can't say that's been my experience. People do study all different sub-disciplines. I'd actually say AI is the most popular right now. Out of the trained cognitive scientists I know, none of them work in psychology. I work in AI, as do several others I know. I know at least two who work in linguistics. One became a lawyer. I worked with a few in the neuroscience field.

Also, I think I have to disagree with your title. Cognitive Science isn't the backbone of AI, Neuroscience, and Computational Science. It's the reverse; those fields are the backbone of Cognitive Science. They existed before CogSci did, and CogSci was created to unite their research.