Preface

The inspiration for this book originated from an intention to show that in the architecture of human cognition the experience of contrariety is widespread and common to many areas of theoretical and experimental research in the Cognitive Sciences. Since the subject is approached with different operational mind-sets, the variety of meanings, applicative contexts and fields of research referring to the word "contrary" raises the issue of what is invariant in all these areas and what is the ultimate nature of contrariety. Beyond the many questions which this book raises, we might consider how many more questions we might need to ask in order to fully understand how contrariety works in our cognitive system. This is something that cannot be resolved with things as they are now, but the aim of this book is also to stimulate people into asking further questions.