Draft:Cognitive conflict
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Cognitive conflict is any conflict that exists withing the cognitive sphere. This is often related to Cognitive Dissonance, but is also considered more general, since it does not need to exist within any particular person.
These conflicts often exist between people, where people are the source of the conflicting information, but also they can be within one individual, for instance between their current behavior and their past commitments.
One advantage of using cognitive conflict compared to other monikers is that it can be used more generally. For instance, whereas Thomas Kuhn talks about the learning process of science as containing a 'crisis' before it can begin to explore new ways of things, this is the conflict state. This is matched for instance within Jean Piaget's conceptions of learning, where the child first must understand that the current way of thinking is inadequate for the new challenges it encounters. This situation where the child recognizes that their way of thinking of the world is not useful anymore is the moment of conflict. Changing the child's mind is only the result and way of solving this conflict.
Cognitive conflicts are also why wars happen, because people think about things in different ways and are ready to die for them.