Paul Thagard Saskatchewan, Canada, 1950
Graduated in philosophy at the Universities of Saskatchewan, Cambridge and Toronto and computer science at the University of Michigan, Paul Thagard has taught at Michigan and Princeton before joining the University of Waterloo, where from 1992 he taught philosophy, psychology and computer science. At the university is also director of the Laboratory for Computational Epistemology and Cognitive Science Program. He was president of the Governing Board of the Cognitive Science Society. In 1999 he was elected to the Royal Society of Canada. In 2003 he received the award for excellence in research at the University of Waterloo in 2007 and the Molson Prize by the Canada Council for the Arts. Paul Thagard has proposed several cognitive functions-including perception, analogy, explanation, decision making, planning, etc. can be understood in terms of "maximum computational consistency." Together with Karsten Verbeurgt, formalized the concept of coherence as a constraint for troubleshooting.