Cognitomania

The cognitive science version of Neuromania: the belief that cognition—often modeled as computation or information processing—is the master key to explaining mind, behavior, and society. Cognitomania reduces all mental phenomena to algorithms, heuristics, and biases, and insists that cognitive science will eventually replace psychology, sociology, and even philosophy. It is common in AI hype, where human thinking is treated as a buggy version of machine logic. Critics argue that it neglects embodiment, emotion, culture, and the material conditions of cognition. It also tends to universalize Western individualist models as the norm for all human thinking.

Example: “The cognitomaniac insisted that ‘reasoning is just Bayesian updating’ and that all cultural differences in decision‑making are ‘performance errors.’ He couldn’t see that rationality itself is culturally shaped.”

Cognitomania by Abzugal Nammugal Enkigal June 5, 2026