Cognition

Cognition is thinking.

Compare with: integrated learning, emotion, and intention.


In Chapter 11, Experience and Thinking, Dewey (1916) wrote:

Thinking, in other words, is the intentional endeavor to discover specific connections between something we do and the consequences which result… (p. 145, italics added)

Experience as trying involves change, but change is meaningless transition unless it is consciously connected with the return wave of consequences which flow from it. When an activity is continued into the undergoing of consequences, when the change made by action is reflected back into the change made in us, the mere flux is loaded with significance. We learn something. (p. 139, italics added)

Experience is primarily an active-passive affair; it is not primarily cognitive. But … the measure of the value of the experience lies in the perception of relationships or continuities to which it leads up. It includes cognition in the degree in which it is cumulative or amounts to something, or has meaning. (p. 140, italics added)