Shepherd Joshua
Carleton University, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada.
Facultat de Filosofia, Universität de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain.
Wiley Interdiscip Rev Cogn Sci. 2023 Mar;14(2):e1629. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1629. Epub 2022 Oct 20.
Cognitive effort is thought to be familiar in everyday life, ubiquitous across multiple variations of task and circumstance, and integral to cost/benefit computations that are themselves central to the proper functioning of cognitive control. In particular, cognitive effort is thought to be closely related to the assessment of cognitive control's costs. I argue here that the construct of cognitive effort, as it is deployed in cognitive psychology and neuroscience, is problematically unclear. The result is that talk of cognitive effort may paper over significant disagreement regarding the nature of cognitive effort, and its key functions for cognitive control. I highlight key points of disagreement, and several open questions regarding what causes cognitive effort, what cognitive effort represents, cognitive effort's relationship to action, and cognitive effort's relationship to consciousness. I also suggest that pluralism about cognitive effort-that cognitive effort may manifest as a range of intentional or non-intentional actions the function of which is to promote greater success at paradigmatic cognitive control tasks-may be a fruitful and irenic way to conceive of cognitive effort. Finally, I suggest that recent trends in work on cognitive control suggests that we might fruitfully conceive of cognitive effort as one key node in a complex network of mental value, and that studying this complex network may illuminate the nature of cognitive control, and the role of consciousness in cognitive control's proper functioning. This article is categorized under: Philosophy > Consciousness Philosophy > Psychological Capacities Neuroscience > Cognition.
认知努力在日常生活中被认为是常见的，在多种任务和情境变化中普遍存在，并且是成本/收益计算的组成部分，而这些计算本身对于认知控制的正常运作至关重要。特别是，认知努力被认为与认知控制成本的评估密切相关。我在此认为，在认知心理学和神经科学中所运用的认知努力这一概念存在问题，不够清晰。结果是，关于认知努力的讨论可能掩盖了在认知努力的本质及其对认知控制的关键功能方面的重大分歧。我强调了分歧的关键点，以及关于认知努力的成因、认知努力代表什么、认知努力与行动的关系以及认知努力与意识的关系的几个开放性问题。我还提出，关于认知努力的多元论——即认知努力可能表现为一系列有意或无意的行动，其功能是在典型的认知控制任务中促进更大的成功——可能是一种富有成效且平和的理解认知努力的方式。最后，我认为认知控制研究的近期趋势表明，我们可以富有成效地将认知努力视为心理价值复杂网络中的一个关键节点，并且研究这个复杂网络可能会阐明认知控制的本质以及意识在认知控制正常运作中的作用。本文分类如下：哲学>意识；哲学>心理能力；神经科学>认知。
