Reasoning, Meaning, and Mind


Book Description

Gilbert Harman presents a selection of fifteen interconnected essays on fundamental issues at the centre of analytic philosophy. The book opens with a group of four essays discussing basic principles of reasoning and rationality. The next three essays argue against the idea that certain claims are true by virtue of meaning and knowable by virtue of meaning. In the third group of essays Harman sets out his own view of meaning, arguing that it depends upon the functioning of concepts in reasoning, perception, and action, by which these concepts are related to the world. He also examines the relation between language and thought. The final three essays investigate the nature of mind, developing further the themes already set out. Reasoning, Meaning, and Mind offers an integrated presentation of this rich and influential body of work.




The Life of the Mind


Book Description

The author's final work, presented in a one-volume edition, is a rich, challenging analysis of man's mental activity, considered in terms of thinking, willing, and judging. Edited by Mary McCarthy; Indices.




Embodied Mind, Meaning, and Reason


Book Description

Mark Johnson is one of the great thinkers of our time on how the body shapes the mind. This book brings together a selection of essays from the past two decades that build a powerful argument that any scientifically and philosophically satisfactory view of mind and thought must ultimately explain how bodily perception and action give rise to cognition, meaning, language, action, and values. A brief account of Johnson’s own intellectual journey, through which we track some of the most important discoveries in the field over the past forty years, sets the stage. Subsequent chapters set out Johnson’s important role in embodied cognition theory, including his cofounding (with George Lakoff) of conceptual metaphor theory and, later, their theory of bodily structures and processes that underlie all meaning, conceptualization, and reasoning. A detailed account of how meaning arises from our physical engagement with our environments provides the basis for a nondualistic, nonreductive view of mind that he sees as most congruous with the latest cognitive science. A concluding section explores the implications of our embodiment for our understanding of knowledge, reason, and truth. The resulting book will be essential for all philosophers dealing with mind, thought, and language.




The Brain and the Meaning of Life


Book Description

Defending the superiority of evidence-based reasoning over religious faith and philosophical thought experiments, Thagard argues that minds are brains and that reality is what science can discover. Brains come to know reality through a combination of perception and reasoning. Just as important, our brains evaluate aspects of reality through emotions that can produce both good and bad decisions. Our cognitive and emotional abilities allow us to understand reality, decide effectively, act morally, and pursue the vital needs of love, work, and play. Wisdom consists of knowing what matters, why it matters, and how to achieve it."--Jacket.




Thinking, Fast and Slow


Book Description

*Major New York Times Bestseller *More than 2.6 million copies sold *One of The New York Times Book Review's ten best books of the year *Selected by The Wall Street Journal as one of the best nonfiction books of the year *Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient *Daniel Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky is the subject of Michael Lewis's best-selling The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Topping bestseller lists for almost ten years, Thinking, Fast and Slow is a contemporary classic, an essential book that has changed the lives of millions of readers.




Practical Shape


Book Description

Everyone allows that we can reason to a new belief from beliefs that we already have. Aristotle thought that we could also reason from beliefs to action. Practical Shape: A Theory of Practical Reasoning establishes this possibility of reasoning to action, in a way that allows also for reasoning to intention, hope, fear, and doubt. While many philosophers have found little sense in Aristotle's claim, Dancy offers a general theory of reasoning that is sensitive to current debates but still Aristotelian in spirit. The text clearly sets out the similarities between reasoning to action and reasoning to belief, which are far more striking than any dissimilarities. Its detailed account of practical reasoning, a topic inadequately covered in current literature, is presented in such a way as to be intelligible to a variety of readers, making it an ideal resource for students of philosophy but also of interest to academics in related disciplines.




The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning


Book Description

The Oxford Handbook of Thinking and Reasoning brings together the contributions of many of the leading researchers in thinking and reasoning to create the most comprehensive overview of research on thinking and reasoning that has ever been available. Each chapter includes a bit of historical perspective on the topic, and concludes with some thoughts about where the field seems to be heading.




Thought


Book Description

Thoughts and other mental states are defined by their role in a functional system. Since it is easier to determine when we have knowledge than when reasoning has occurred, Gilbert Harman attempts to answer the latter question by seeing what assumptions about reasoning would best account for when we have knowledge and when not. He describes induction as inference to the best explanation, or more precisely as a modification of beliefs that seeks to minimize change and maximize explanatory coherence. Originally published in 1973. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.




Descartes' Error


Book Description

Since Descartes famously proclaimed, "I think, therefore I am," science has often overlooked emotions as the source of a person’s true being. Even modern neuroscience has tended, until recently, to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain function, disregarding emotions. This attitude began to change with the publication of Descartes’ Error in 1995. Antonio Damasio—"one of the world’s leading neurologists" (The New York Times)—challenged traditional ideas about the connection between emotions and rationality. In this wondrously engaging book, Damasio takes the reader on a journey of scientific discovery through a series of case studies, demonstrating what many of us have long suspected: emotions are not a luxury, they are essential to rational thinking and to normal social behavior.




Dynamic Epistemic Logic


Book Description

Dynamic Epistemic Logic is the logic of knowledge change. This book provides various logics to support such formal specifications, including proof systems. Concrete examples and epistemic puzzles enliven the exposition. The book also offers exercises with answers. It is suitable for graduate courses in logic. Many examples, exercises, and thorough completeness proofs and expressivity results are included. A companion web page offers slides for lecturers and exams for further practice.




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