How Can Thought Grasp The World

Cognitive science is a cross-subject research on mind and intelligence, including philosophy, psychology, computer science, neurology, linguistics, and anthropology, being one of the most active research fields in the world. Coherence of cognition is very important to the research of cognitive science, which is almost a blanket for both foreign and domestic fields. Expect the Canadian Paul Thagard who has made systematic studies on this subject, there are few foreign scholars engaged in this field. Whereas in domestic field, based on the research of psychology and linguistics, it usually acquires simple meanings of consistence or continuity.Paul Thagard's Coherence in Thought and Action, makes a research on coherence of cognition from the aspect of relationship between thought and action in the view of philosophy. It was published in the year of 2000. There is no Chinese version yet in the market, and no experts making special research on it either. Through translation, summary, extract and analysis of the original work, we finished this paper in the prerequisite of full understanding of Coherence in Thought and Action. In the modes of documentary analysis, historic analysis, comparative analysis and comprehensive analysis, the essay makes a systematic research on coherence of cognition on the basis of scientific and all-round comprehension of this thought, tying to seek and grasp the essence and connotation of coherence of cognition so as to provide scientific theoretical guidance for cognitive practices.The essay is composed of three parts. The first chapter is an illustration of coherence of cognition connotation, including four main parts: coherence of cognition and its types; describing of computing coherence, which is divided into such five modes as exhaustive, incremental, connectionist, greedy and semi definite programming; describing of measuring coherence; coherence provides base for knowledge. The second chapter makes an illustration of realizing methods of coherence of cognition, including such five methods or ways as explanatory coherence, analogical coherence, deductive coherence, perceptual coherence, and conceptual coherence, which are finally unified into coherence of cognition. The third chapter makes an illustration of coherence of cognition application, including the degree of coherence of entire set of element, subset of element and particular element. In the theory of coherence of cognition, it explains philosophy questions such as truth and world, mind and body, God existence etc, ethics questions such as abolition of death sentence, abortion prohibition etc, and questions in politics and psychology etc., on which basis it provides a model of consensus with unification of individual consciousness and social interact.