The computer analogy of the mind has been as widely adopted in contemporary cognitiveneuroscience as was the analogy of the brain as a collection of organs in phrenology. Just as thephrenologist would
Experiences and feelings are inherently conscious states. There is something it islike to feel pain, to have an itch, to experience bright red. Philosophers call this sort ofconsciousness "phenomenal
In Human Reasoning and Cognitive Science, Keith Stenning andMichiel van Lambalgen--a cognitive scientist and a logician--argue for the indispensability ofmodern mathematical logic to the study of huma
According to Thomas Metzinger, no such things as selves exist in the world: nobodyever had or was a self. All that exists are phenomenal selves, as they appear in consciousexperience. The phenomenal s
The Cerebral Code is a new understanding of how Darwinianprocesses could operate in the brain to shape mental images in only seconds, starting with shuffledmemories no better than the jumble of our ni
Western philosophy has long been divided between empiricists, who argue that human understanding has its basis in experience, and rationalists, who argue that reason is the source of knowledge. A cen
The study of rationality and practical reason, or rationality in action, has been central to Western intellectual culture. In this invigorating book, John Searle lays out six claims of what he calls t
In exploring the nature of psychological explanation, this book looks at how psychologists theorize about the human ability to calculate, to speak a language and the like. It shows how good theorizing
This book considers scientific method in the behavioral sciences, with particularreference to psychology. Psychologists learn about research methods and use them to conduct theirresearch, but their tr
In this strikingly original contribution to our understanding of Chinese philosophy, Françle;ois Julien, a French sinologist whose work has not yet appeared in English uses the Chinese concept
What assumptions and methods allow us to turn observations into causal knowledge, and how can even incomplete causal knowledge be used in planning and prediction to influence and control our environme
Although fatigue has been actively investigated for more than 100 years, we haveprogressed little in either its theoretical or practical understanding. Fatigue has been consideredto be both a symptom
Science tries to understand human action from two perspectives, the cognitive and the volitional. The volitional approach, in contrast to the more dominant "outside-in" studies of cognition
The grand and sweeping claims of many relativists might seem to amount to the argument that everything is relative—except the thesis of relativism. In this book, Steven Hales defends relativism
Contemporary philosophy of mind is dominated by anti- individualism, which holds that a subject's thoughts are determined not only by what is inside her head but also by aspects of her environment. D
Human beings, like other organisms, are the products of evolution. Like other organisms, we exhibit traits that are the product of natural selection. Our psychological capacities are evolved traits a
A central thesis of this book on the cognitive neuroscience of attention is that attention is not a single entity, but a finite set of brain processes that interact mutually and with other brain proc
By the mid-1980s researchers from artificial intelligence, computer science, brainand cognitive science, and psychology realized that the idea of computers as intelligent machineswas inappropriate. Th
"Some Pow'r did us the giftie grant/ To see oursels as others can't." With that play on Burns' famous line as a preface, Willard Van Orman Quine sets out to spin the yarn of his life so far
