Readings In Cognitive Science

Readings in Cognitive Science: A Perspective from Psychology and Artificial Intelligence brings together important studies that fall in the intersection between artificial intelligence and cognitive psychology. This book is composed of six chapters, and begins with the complex anatomy and physiology of the human brain. The next chapters deal with the components of cognitive science, such as the semantic memory, similarity and analogy, and learning. These chapters also consider the application of mental models, which represent the domain-specific knowledge needed to understand a dynamic system or natural physical phenomena. The remaining chapters discuss the concept of reasoning, problem solving, planning, vision, and imagery. This book is of value to psychologists, psychiatrists, neurologists, and researchers who are interested in cognition.

Mind Readings is a collection of accessible readings on some of the most important topics in cognitive science. Although anyone interested in the interdisciplinary study of mind will find the selections well worth reading, they work particularly well with Paul Thagard's textbook Mind: An Introduction Cognitive Science, and provide further discussion on the major topics discussed in that book. The first eight chapters present approaches to cognitive science from the perspective that thinking consists of computational procedures on mental representations. The remaining five chapters discuss challenges to the computational-representational understanding of mind. Contributors John R. Anderson, Ruth M.J. Byrne, E.H. Durfee, Chris Eliasmith, Owen Flanagan, Dedre Gentner, Janice Glasgow, Philip N. Johnson-Laird, Alan Mackworth, Arthur B. Markman, Douglas L. Medin, Keith Oatley, Dimitri Papadias, Steven Pinker, David E. Rumelhart, Herbert A. Simon.

An anthology of core readings on cognitive psychology.

First published in 1977, this is a volume about the scientific study of thinking: its possibility, its part state and its future prospects. The editors have brought together a set of readings which draw on work in cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, psycholinguistics and philosophy. It is not, however, a mechanical or merely routine collection. At the time of publication there had been rapid and important advances in several different disciplines concerned with human thinking; many of these advances seem to be fundamental and convergent, to point towards a genuine cognitive science. The editors have tried to capture this sense of readiness, excitement and impetus in their selection of readings and their presentation of them. There are substantial introductions to each of the seven parts of the book as a whole to connect and explain the material, with the student and general reader particularly in mind.

This collection of readings shows how cognitive science can influence most of the primary branches of philosophy, as well as how philosophy critically examines the foundations of cognitive science. Its broad coverage extends beyond current texts that focus mainly on the impact of cognitive science on philosophy of mind and philosophy of psychology, to include materials that are relevant to five other branches of philosophy: epistemology, philosophy of science (and mathematics), metaphysics, language, and ethics. The readings are organized by philosophical fields, with selections evenly divided between philosophers and cognitive scientists. They draw on research in numerous areas of cognitive science, including cognitive psychology, developmental psychology, social psychology, psychology of reasoning and judgment, artificial intelligence, linguistics, and neuropsychology. There are timely treatments of current topics and debates such as the innate understanding of number, children's theory of mind, self-knowledge, consciousness, connectionism, and ethics and cognitive science.

The Reaching for Mind workshop, held at AISB 95, explicitly addressed itself to the current crisis in Cognitive Science. In particular, the issue of how this discipline can address consciousness was a leitmotiv in the workshop. The conclusion seems inescapable that there is a need for two sciences in this area. Cognitive Science can be freed to become a fully-fledged experimental epistemology by the creation of a science of consciousness also encompassing subjectivity. This exciting collection of papers indicates where both these sciences may be heading. (Series B)The programme committee of the workshop included: Mike Brady (Oxford); Daniel Dennett (Tufts); Jerry Feldman (Berkeley); John Macnamara (McGill) and Zenon Pylyshyn (Rutgers).

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Why are there religious beliefs in all cultures? Do they have features in common and why does religion persist in the face of science? Pascal Boyer shows how experimental findings in cognitive science, evolutionary biology and cultural anthropology are now providing precise answers to these general questions, and providing, for the first time, real answers to the question: Why do we believe?