In making decisions, when should we go with our gut and when should we try to analyzeevery option? When should we use our intuition and when should we rely on logic and statistics? Mostof us would pro
Doreen Kimura provides an intelligible overview of what is known about the neural andhormonal bases of sex differences in behavior, particularly differences in cognitive ability.
A study of the philosophical implications of evolutionary psychology, suggesting that knowledge is a set of natural kinds housed in the modules of a massively modular mind. In Reconstructing Reason
Groundbreaking essays and commentaries on the ways that recent findings in psychology and neuroscience illuminate virtue and character and related issues in philosophy.Philosophers have discussed virt
At the age of 19 Ian Waterman was suddenly struck down at work by a rare neurologicalillness that deprived him of all sensation below the neck. He fell on the floor in a heap, unable tostand or contro
One of the most challenging problems facing cognitive psychology and cognitive neuroscience is to explain how mental processes are voluntarily controlled, allowing the computational resources of the b
In Organisms and Artifacts, Tim Lewens investigates the analogical use of thelanguage of design in evolutionary biology. Uniquely among the natural sciences, biology usesdescriptive and explanatory te
People commonly use age to categorize and stereotype others--even though those who stereotype the elderly are eventually bound to become elderly themselves. Ageism is found cross-culturally, but it is
Emergence, largely ignored just thirty years ago, has become one of the liveliest areas of research in both philosophy and science. Fueled in part by advances in complexity theory, artificial life, p
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
What is a self? Does it exist in reality or is it a mere social construct—or is it perhaps a neurologically induced illusion? The legitimacy of the concept of the self has been questioned by bo
Robot motion planning has become a major focus of robotics. Research findings can be applied not only to robotics but to planning routes on circuit boards, directing digital actors in computer graphi
In this provocative book, Paul Glimcher argues that economic theory may provide analternative to the classical Cartesian model of the brain and behavior. Glimcher argues thatCartesian dualism operates
In this book, Alan Berger further develops the new theory of reference -- as formulated by Kripke and Putnam -- applying it in novel ways to many philosophical problems concerning reference and existe
One philosophical approach to causation sees counterfactual dependence as the key to the explanation of causal facts: for example, events c (the cause) and e (the effect) both occur, but had c not oc
The diversity of topics discussed in this book reflects the breadth of Judith Jarvis Thomson's philosophical work. Throughout her long career at MIT, Thomson's straightforward approach and emphasis on
The study of the relationship between natural language and spatial cognition has the potential to yield answers to vexing questions about the nature of the mind, language, and culture. The fifteen ori
This long-awaited work by prominent Harvard psychologist Stephen Kosslyn integrates a twenty-year research program on the nature of high-level vision and mental imagery. Image and Brain marshals insig
The first systematic examination of Hilary Putnam's arguments against computational functionalism challenges each of Putnam's main arguments. With mind-brain identity theories no longer dominant in
Are women and men biologically destined to be in perpetual conflict? Does evolutionary genetics adequately explain sexual aggression? Such questions have been much debated in both the media and academ
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
This wide-ranging collection of essays is inspired by the memory of the cognitive psychologist John Macnamara, whose influential contributions to language and concept acquisition have provided the bas
The essays range across fields foundational to cognitive science, including perception, attention, memory, and language, using formal, experimental, and neuroscientific approaches to issues of represe
Humans were thought to be unique among the species in having minds, but recent results showing the richness and diversity in animal psychology makes this view untenable. Yet there remains the question
This investigation on the borderlines of metaphysics, everyday geometry and the theory of perception seeks to answer two basic questions: Do holes really exist? If they do, what are they? Holes are am
Many philosophers believe that normative ethics is in principle independent of psychology. By contrast, the authors of these essays explore the interconnections between psychology and moral theory. Th
How do humans understand and process language? The 18 contributions in Lexical Representation and Process provide a coherent and well-documented frame of reference for a field of study that is becomi
In this provocative study, Robert Cummins takes on philosophers, both old and new, who pursue the question of mental representation as an abstraction, apart from the constraints of any particular theo
The last decade saw the arrival of a new player in the creation/evolution debate—the intelligent design creationism (IDC) movement, whose strategy is to act as "the wedge" to overturn
Albrecht Dürer's famous portrayal of creative effort in paralysis, the unsurpassed masterpiece of copperplate engraving titled Melencolia I, has stood for centuries as a pictorial summa of knowledge
The poet Jean de La Fontaine famously dedicated his Fables in 1668 to Louis XIV's son, declaring in verse that "animals I choose/to proffer lessons that we all might use." Less well known is that La
The ultimate goal of the cognitive sciences is to understand how the brain works--howit turns "matter into imagination." In Imagination and the Meaningful Brain, psychoanalyst ArnoldModell claims that
In Real Natures and Familiar Objects Crawford Elder defends, with qualifications, theontology of common sense. He argues that we exist -- that no gloss is necessary for the statement"human beings exis
This theoretical guide for speech-language pathologists, neuropsychologists, neurologists, and cognitive psychologists describes the linguistic and psycholinguistic basis of aphasias that are a result
These essays explore cognitively oriented empirical trials that use AI programming as a modeling methodology and that can provide valuable insight into a variety of learning problems. New perspectiv
The philosophy of perception is a microcosm of the metaphysics of mind. Its central problems—What is perception? What is the nature of perceptual consciousness? How can one fit an account of pe
Modern psychology began with the adoption of experimental methods at the end of thenineteenth century: Wilhelm Wundt established the first formal laboratory in 1879; universitiescreated independent ch
