 Cognition is the mental action or process of acquiring knowledge and understanding through thought, experience and the senses. Cognition is a word that dates back to the 15th century when it meant thinking and awareness. Today the term cognition refers to a diverse collection of psychological activities and encompasses processes such as attention, comprehension, memory, judgment, evaluation, reasoning, decision making, problem solving and the use of language among others. Cognition within humans may be concrete or abstract, conscious or unconscious as well as intuitive or conceptual. Cognitive science is an interdisciplinary approach that tries to understand the mind, intelligence and the workings of cognition by drawing upon insights from psychology, philosophy, artificial intelligence, neural science, linguistics and anthropology among others. There are a number of different approaches to understanding cognition but two main contemporary paradigms are the computational and evolutionary approaches. The first wave of cognitive science focused on conceptual processes that generate knowledge about the world by looking at cognition in terms of inputs, processes and outputs. One of the main tenets of cognitive science since its origins is that thinking can best be understood in terms of representational structures in the mind and computational processes that operate on those structures. A more recent approach has been that of evolutionary psychology which tries to understand human cognition as the product of a set of evolved psychological adaptations to perennial challenges in our historical, social and natural environment. This evolutionary perspective can be seen as the second wave of the cognitive revolution. This second wave views the human brain as composed of evolved computational systems formed through natural and social selection to use information to adaptively regulate psychology, social and physical behavior. This shift in focus from knowledge acquisition to adaptive regulation of behavior provides new ways of thinking about different areas of cognition. One of the primary overarching organizational structures to cognition is its use of abstraction to create a hierarchical structure composed of various levels of abstraction. In an evolutionary sense our biological brains can be seen as a primate brain or lizard brain that is wrapped around a mammal brain inside of the primate brain inside of the human brain which is identified as the most recently evolved part of our brains specifically the frontal lobe or neocortex. The human brain functions hierarchically in its capacity to modify the earlier evolved more primitive parts of our brain through the more advanced parts. Psychologist Abraham Maslow made a holistic attempt to try and classify this hierarchical structure to the brain and its corresponding needs in what is called Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Although Maslow's hierarchy may not define an exact correspondence to the underlying complexity of the brain it does capture a general hierarchical structure to cognition, motivation and the different emotional needs that people have. Within this hierarchy of needs people are seen to have a set of basic physiological needs such as food, sex, sleep etc but in addition to these basic emotions we also have a set of higher psychological needs that we seek, desires to be safe, to be loved, to have self-esteem, to experience what Maslow called self-actualization. The brainstem is the area associated with the most primitive functions regulating the most basic biological requirements such as regulating one's breathing or limb coordination whilst walking. Much of our cognition takes place unconsciously in these most primitive parts of our brain which are also where our emotions are housed. Primitive parts of our brain can experience basic emotions like hunger but only a much more evolved neocortex can experience an emotion like the need for self-actualization. The neocortex or the frontal lobe of our brain has executive function whereas more primitive parts of the brain are the seats of emotion and instinct. The neocortex is involved in complex cognition such as required for social behavior, long-term planning and inhibition. The brain is not a unified whole with some centralized command center. The perception of it being so is really a construct. In effect it consists of networks of different functioning domains and hierarchical levels. Many different parts are interacting and communicating to on aggregate create the illusion of one unified consciousness that we think of as ourselves. But this is simply a construct. The reality involves much tension and conflict between the different brain regions as they each attempt to fulfill their own function and purpose. This is most explicit in the relationship between the more advanced neocortex that has executive functions and the more primitive parts through which we experience direct emotions and instincts. The conflict between the different parts creates cognitive dissonance which is the holding of two or more beliefs or ideas that are manifestly contradictory. We do not like cognitive dissonance and thus are motivated to resolve this conflict. The individual may resolve this cognitive dissonance in a number of different ways. They may exert downward control from the executive parts to constrain lower level drives. They may avoid this cognitive dissonance by compartmentalizing beliefs and ideas so as to keep them separate. One instance of this might involve special pleading which is a form of fallacious argument that involves an attempt to cite something as an exception to a generally accepted rule without justification for defining it as an exception. In so doing one can keep ideas, beliefs or motives separate from other categories that might create conflict. Human beings are very good at inventing reasons to justify their desired beliefs, what is called rationalization. Often rather than imposing these high level functions on our more primitive desires, the neocortex may rationalize decisions that are made by more primitive regions in order to resolve the cognitive dissonance through the use of special pleading for example. The different brain regions come into conflict and once the conflict is resolved our brain gives us a small amount of dopamine which is a reward neurotransmitter that makes us feel good. When we meet our psychological needs our brain gives us a reward that makes us feel good. This is a basic reward and punishment system hardwired into the biochemistry of the brain. When we do something that is likely to be advantageous evolutionary we feel good which equates to a release of dopamine to our reward centers. With functional magnetic resonance imaging and transcranial magnetic stimulation contemporary neuroscience methods are increasingly finding the neurological correlates to what psychologists have been demonstrating for decades. With these tools we can now see different brain areas in conflict and the conflict resolution that the individual experiences when a decision or rationalization is achieved. The desire for control or at least for the sense or illusion of control is one of the most basic and primitive needs that motivates us. We do not like to experience the feeling that we are victims of a whimsical world or that we are helpless in the face of uncertain forces or random events. This desire for control can be seen as a direct product of evolution. Unknown and uncontrollable environments limit our capacity for predictability and security that threatens our survival. We like to think that we exert some causal control over ourselves the events that affect us and over our environment. One manifestation of this desire for control is a belief in superstitions. We tend to develop beliefs that if we engage in a certain activity it will protect us or enable us to succeed. Wanting more control or certainty is an important driving force behind most forms of superstition. We invariably look for some kind of a rule or an explanation for why things happen and feel discontent if we do not find one, leaving us open to the desire of simply creating one. Superstitious practices give us the illusion that we can exert some control over otherwise random events. We also have a desire for simplicity because the simpler things are the more control we can have over them. Therefore we are motivated to oversimplify the things that we're confronted with. We stereotype because it enables us to reduce a potentially complicated set of factors into some simple rule. This can be advantageous when we understand that the rule is just a simplified representation. But often we take the simplified model to be the complex reality that it represents and this leads us to errors because the two are very different. Along with the desire for control we have an innate desire for meaning in our lives, a sense of unity, a desire for connection with something greater than ourselves and these are strong motivators towards belief in some supernatural power or force that fulfills all of these psychological needs. The drive towards belief is very strong in humans, particularly strong towards things that we want to believe in. Not only have we evolved to identify patterns rapidly, but we also inherently desire control, a sense of stability, order and unity. Many of the things that we're driven to believe are precisely so because they provide this sense of unity to our interpretation of the world and relieve the burden of having to make a full inquiry into a complex reality. Added to this many things are beneficial for us to believe. When we have a sense that we are connected to something that is profound it feels good. This can then be reinforced by confirmation bias which involves seeking out data that seems to confirm our beliefs. Beliefs are largely expressive of our emotional state. When we are positive we feel the future will be good, when we are feeling negative we believe the future will be bad. Thus it can be very difficult to change people's behavior by making a rational argument to them because their behavior is still overwhelmed by their beliefs and their emotions. In such circumstances addressing the individual's emotions can be much more effective. This has been amply demonstrated with the success of modern advertising that speaks intentionally to the emotions whilst largely bypassing reason knowing this to be more effective for many people. The social brain hypothesis was proposed by the British anthropologist Robin Dunbar who argues that human intelligence did not evolve primarily as a means to solve ecological problems but rather as a means of surviving and reproducing in large and complex social groups. The development of the human brain can be closely associated with the development of ever more complex social systems. The use of language for communications between members and other socioeconomic factors involved in the formation of large social organizations. Social norms, the customary rules that govern behavior in groups and societies strongly shape individual human behavior. Most people in reality are driven much more by social influence than by the use of reason. Telling someone what others do in a situation is much more effective than telling them what is the logical thing to do. For example telling people that others do not drink and drive than telling them the negative implications of such behavior. Individual humans have a need for self-esteem. People want to feel good about themselves but just as importantly we want to know that others think positively of us also. People almost always want to make their beliefs and behaviors seem consistent to others. In order to do this we often rationalize what we want to believe in order to put a socially acceptable spin on our behavior. Equally people do not like to admit that they may be wrong or to admit that we may have flaws as this is threatening to our self-esteem and social status. The human brain gives us the experience of free will and control over ourselves but research overwhelmingly shows that human beings generally have poor self-control. Typically about 95% of the time people will fail to alter their own behavior through conscious effort alone for example to quit some habit. This is due to the fact that this takes significant energy and conscious commitment on behalf of the individual. The brain is highly adaptive and plastic meaning its ways of thinking can change over time therefore if we practice and make a concerted effort to behave in certain ways these behaviors will become inculcated and will become easier over time. Practicing the habit of executive control or executive function over once more basic parts of the brain can be a learnt ability. This is where critical thinking can be of value to us in examining the individual's behavior carefully in understanding errors and enabling us to exert an effort to correct flaws in our thinking and behavior.