Bøger i A Bradford Book serien

How human consciousness evolved to perceive and create art.

Scientists may be approaching the finish-line in the race to understand consciousness. John Taylor introduces the contending theories, including his own.

An essential guide to the field, with papers drawn from disciplines as varied as neuroscience, psychology, cognitive science, engineering, and physics.

Leading figures working in the philosophy of action debate foundational issues relating to the causal theory of action.The causal theory of action (CTA) is widely recognized in the literature of the philosophy of action as the "standard story" of human action and agency—the nearest approximation in the field to a theoretical orthodoxy. This volume brings together leading figures working in action theory today to discuss issues relating to the CTA and its applications, which range from experimental philosophy to moral psychology. Some of the contributors defend the theory while others criticize it; some draw from historical sources while others focus on recent developments; some rely on the tools of analytic philosophy while others cite the latest empirical research on human action. All agree, however, on the centrality of the CTA in the philosophy of action. The contributors first consider metaphysical issues, then reasons-explanations of action, and, finally, new directions for thinking about the CTA. They discuss such topics as the tenability of some alternatives to the CTA; basic causal deviance; the etiology of action; teleologism and anticausalism; and the compatibility of the CTA with theories of embodied cognition. Two contributors engage in an exchange of views on intentional omissions that stretches over four essays, directly responding to each other in their follow-up essays. As the action-oriented perspective becomes more influential in philosophy of mind and philosophy of cognitive science, this volume offers a long-needed debate over foundational issues.ContributorsFred Adams, Jesús H. Aguilar, John Bishop, Andrei A. Buckareff, Randolph Clarke, Jennifer Hornsby, Alicia Juarrero, Alfred R. Mele, Michael S. Moore, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Josef Perner, Johannes Roessler, David-Hillel Ruben, Carolina Sartorio, Michael Smith, Rowland Stout

Natural selection and the controversial issues over the units of selection are the subject of these seventeen essays, grouped in sections that focus on the history of the topic, discuss the levels and units of selection, and present kin, group, and hierarchical models of selection.

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 theory or framework.

An examination, through personal narratives and reflective commentary, of life without sensation or movement in the body.

Stephen Grossberg and his colleagues at Boston University's Center for Adaptive Systems are producing some of the most exciting research in the neural network approach to making computers "think."

"Machines who think—how utterly preposterous," huff beleaguered humanists, defending their dwindling turf. "Artificial Intelligence—it's here and about to surpass our own," crow techno-visionaries, proclaiming dominion. It's so simple and obvious, each side maintains, only a fanatic could disagree.Deciding where the truth lies between these two extremes is the main purpose of John Haugeland's marvelously lucid and witty book on what artificial intelligence is all about. Although presented entirely in non-technical terms, it neither oversimplifies the science nor evades the fundamental philosophical issues. Far from ducking the really hard questions, it takes them on, one by one.Artificial intelligence, Haugeland notes, is based on a very good idea, which might well be right, and just as well might not. That idea, the idea that human thinking and machine computing are "radically the same," provides the central theme for his illuminating and provocative book about this exciting new field. After a brief but revealing digression in intellectual history, Haugeland systematically tackles such basic questions as: What is a computer really? How can a physical object "mean" anything? What are the options for computational organization? and What structures have been proposed and tried as actual scientific models for intelligence?In a concluding chapter he takes up several outstanding problems and puzzles—including intelligence in action, imagery, feelings and personality—and their enigmatic prospects for solution.

A wide-ranging collection of writings on emerging political structures in cyberspace.

Highlights the roles of intention and intentionality in social cognition.

A comprehensive, scientific examination of the popular psychological construct of emotional intelligence.

Industry veteran Raymond Nickerson provides an extensive introduction to the information technology revolution that is transforming industrial society.

This text presents a summary of the basic theoretical structures of classical mechanics, electricity and magnetism, quantum mechanics, statistical physics, special relativity and modern field theories.

Bayes or Bust? provides the first balanced treatment of the complex set of issues involved in this nagging conundrum in the philosophy of science.

The central claim of this powerful philosophical exploration is that within any logic we have, there can be no coherent notion of all truth or of total knowledge. Grim examines a series of logical paradoxes and related formal results to reveal their implications for contemporary epistemology, metaphysics, and the philosophy of religion. He reaches the provocative conclusion that, if the universe is thought of in terms of its truths, it is essentially open and incomplete. The Incomplete Universe includes detailed work on the liar paradox and recent attempts at solution, Kaplan and Montague's paradox of the knower, the Gödel theorems and related incompleteness phenomena, and new forms of Cantorian argument. The emphasis throughout is philosophical rather than formal, with an eye to connection's with possible worlds, the notion of omniscience, and the opening lines of the Tractatus: "The world is all that is the case. "