Concept and Mechanism of Cognition According to Ancient Indian Texts

Pages:53-56
Suhas A. Vinchurkar, Deepeshwar Singh, Naveen K. Visweswaraiah, H.R. Nagendra and Ramachandra G. Bhat (Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana (S-VYASA), Bengaluru)

Cognition is defined as the set of all mental abilities and processes related to knowledge: attention, memory & working memory, judgment& evaluation, reasoning & computation problem solving & decision making, comprehension & production of language(Miller & Wallis, 2009).The concept of cognition and perception has a detailed description in all the six Indian philosophies but has slight variations amongst each of the philosophies.All six schools of Vedic philosophy aim to describe the nature of the external world and its relationship to the individual, to go beyond the world of appearances to ultimate Reality, and to describe the goal of life and the means for attaining this goal. Perception and cognition have been described to have key role in the right means of knowledge(Swami, 2001).The sad-darshana (six philosophical views) are nyaya (logic), vaisesika (atomic theory), sankhya (analysis of matter and spirit), yoga (the discipline of self- realization), karma-mimamsa (science of fruitive work) and vedanta (science of God realization).