What is Cognition and Cognitive Dissonance?
Let’s say that you are asked, ‘How are an apple, a grape, and a peach alike?’ You probably have conscious images of the items. It takes only a bit of reflection to decide that the right answer is, ‘they are all kinds of fruit.’ you know what an apple and a grape and a peach look like. You know they belong to a larger category. All of this knowing represents cognition. A deeper appreciation of the meaning of the word cognition can be had by associating it with the familiar word recognition. Re-cognition means to know again. Now you understand the connection. The philosopher Rene Descartes wrote in Latin, ‘Cogito ergo sum,’ meaning, ‘I think, therefore I am.’ This is one of the most famous quotations in Philosophy. The Latin word Cogito for ‘I think’ is the root word for both thinking and knowing. Another way of saying that a person is thinking is to say that he or she is cogitating. Cognition is considered to be the highest level of mental information processing. Below cognition are sen
