Summary
Contents
Subject index
This thoroughly revised edition of the classic textbook explores a wide range of problems in psychology, philosophy, cognitive and brains sciences, identifying the major topics, debates, and controversies and presenting them in a balanced and accessible manner for students.
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Front Matter
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Chapters
- Chapter 1: Science: Why, and How? Some Basic Ideas in Scientific Method
- Introduction: Why Science?
- Demarcating Science
- Unification and Underlying Causes
- ‘Criticism’: Keeping an Open Mind
- Knowledge: Realism and Idealism (Relativism), Common Sense and Science
- Realism
- Idealism and Relativism
- The Dilemma: The Impossibility of ‘Objective’ Knowledge
- The Pragmatic View: Functional Knowledge
- Everyday Knowledge and Scientific Knowledge
- Some Characteristics of Scientific Knowledge
- Arguments: Deduction, Induction, Abduction
- Deductive Arguments
- Inductive Arguments
- The ‘Problem’ of Induction
- Inference to the Best Explanation
- Context of Justification and Context of Discovery
- Laws, Theories, Models and Causes
- Empiricism: Pure Observation?
- Observation and Unobservables
- Theory-Ladenness
- Theories
- Laws and Theories
- Empirical/Experimental and Theoretical Laws
- Models
- Causes
- Bringing Induction, Deduction, Laws and Observations Together: The Empirical Cycle
- Conclusion
- Further Reading
- Chapter 2: Kinds of Explanations: Laws, Interpretations and Functions
- Introduction: Modes of Explanation: Nomological, Hermeneutical, Functional
- Nomological Explanation: The Classical View
- Deductive-Nomological Explanation
- Problems with the Deductive-Nomological Model
- Prediction and Probability
- Certainty or Reliability?
- (Pseudo-) Causal Explanation in the Social Sciences
- Hermeneutical Understanding: An Alternative to Nomological Explanation
- Functional and Teleological Explanation
- What is Function?
- Function, Teleology and Evolution
- Two Kinds of Functions: Causal Role and Selected Functions
- Seeing More: The Use of Functional Explanations
- Psychology: Functionalism Explains the Mind as a Virtual Machine
- Explaining Complex Systems by Analysing and Decomposing Functions
- To Sum Up
- Reduction and Levels of Explanation
- What is Reduction?
- Reduction and the Structure of the World
- ‘Nothing-Buttery’: Reduction and Elimination
- Theory Reduction and the Deductive-Nomological Model
- Why the Classical View of Theory Reduction Doesn't Work: Bridge Laws and Meaning Change
- Beyond Classical Reduction (1): Non-Reductive Materialism and Supervenience
- Beyond Classical Reduction (2): New Wave Reductionism and Eliminativism
- Coevolution versus Elimination
- Reasons and Causes
- Conclusion: The Multiplicity of Explanation
- Further Reading
- Chapter 3: Philosophy of Science (1): Logical Positivism and its Failure
- Introduction: Scientific Methods, Objectivity and Rationality
- Logical Positivism and Demarcation
- Empiricism and the Problem of Unobservable Theoretical Terms
- Verifiability is the Test of Meaningfulness
- Unified Science
- Justification versus Discovery
- The Standard View
- Wittgenstein's Volte-Face
- The Impossibility of Logical Empiricism: Observation and Theory
- Sellars on the ‘Myth of the Given’
- Sellars Invents Another Myth
- Further Trouble for Logical Positivism: Holism, Underdetermination, and Theory-Ladenness
- Quine on ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’
- Underdetermination: The Quine-Duhem Thesis
- Hanson on the Theory-Ladenness of Observation
- Demarcation Revived – Popper
- The Problem with Verification (and Confirmation)
- Popper on Confirmation and Falsification
- Popper on Demarcation and Dogmatism
- Problems with Falsification
- Demarcation Abandoned – Kuhn on Paradigms and Scientific Revolutions
- A Role for History
- Paradigms
- Revolutions
- Normal Science
- Laboratory Practices
- Incommensurability and Relativism
- Rational Reconstruction and Methodological Anarchism: Lakatos and Feyerabend
- Lakatos on Rational Reconstruction
- Feyerabend on Science in a Free Society
- Since Kuhn: Post-Positivism in a Nutshell
- Three Decades of Post-Positivism
- Laudan's Historical Meta-Methodology
- Conclusion: The Moral on Demarcation
- Further Reading
- Chapter 4: Philosophy of Science (2): Recent Proposals and Debates on Scientific Knowledge
- Introduction
- Hermeneutics
- Interpretation and Meaning
- Natural versus Social (Human) Sciences
- Social Constructionism and Rhetoric
- Psychology in Social Constructionism
- Rhetoric
- Problems of Realism and Relativism
- Kinds of Relativism
- Problems for Realism
- Problems for Relativism
- Pragmatism Contra Spectator Theory of Knowledge
- Realism and Scientific Realism
- Putnam's Revision of Realism
- Indirect Realism
- Scientific Realism
- Direct Realism
- Devitt Against ‘Fig-Leaf Realism’
- To Sum Up
- Pragmatism
- Rorty's Pragmatism
- Other Interpretations of Pragmatism
- Conclusion: Knowledge as Skill
- Mind-World Activity
- Naturalism
- Further Reading
- Chapter 5: Sociology and Psychology of Science
- Introduction
- Ideology and the Critical Theory
- The Frankfurt School and Critical Theory
- Social History of Science
- The Social Character of Scientific Knowledge and the Strong Programme
- Relativism in the Strong Programme
- The Sociology of Scientific Practice
- The Constructivist Perspective
- Discourse Analysis
- Scientific Practice
- The ‘Science Wars’
- Conclusion: The World and the Social Nature of Knowledge
- What about a Psychology of Science?
- Cognition
- Experimental Research
- Further Reading
- Chapter 6: Introducing Philosophy of Mind, Brain and Cognition
- Introduction: The Nature of Mind
- Philosophy of Mind: A Cluster of Issues
- Three Features of the Mind: Intelligence, Consciousness, Intentionality
- Traditional Views on the Nature of Mind: Dualism, Materialism, Behaviourism
- Dualism
- Materialism and Reduction
- Linguistic Behaviourism
- Three Perspectives on Mind and Brain
- Three Approaches to Intelligent Systems
- Instrumentalism
- Soft Materialism, Multiple Explanations
- Conclusion: Levels and Perspectives in the Study of Mind and Brain
- Further Reading
- Chapter 7: Modern Approaches to Mind (1): The Language-Based View: Functionalism and the Computational Theory of Mind
- Introduction: The Origins of Computationalism
- Functionalism, Computation, and Formal Languages
- Functionalism and the Cognitive Revolution
- Multiple Realization as Barrier to Reduction
- The Notion of Computation
- The Notion of a Mental Language
- Syntax Mirrors Semantics
- The Computational Theory of Mind: Representations, Symbols, Meaning and Intentionality
- Philosophical Roots: Computation and Mind
- Empirical Claims: Language of Thought
- Empirical Evidence
- Folk Psychology
- CTM: Intentionality and Rationality
- Artificial Intelligence and the Idea of a Physical Symbol System
- The Failure of Classical (‘Strong’) AI
- The Chinese Room
- Conclusion: Classical Computationalism in Trouble
- Further Reading
- Chapter 8: Modern Approaches to Mind (2): The Brain-Based View: Neurophilosophy, Connectionism and Dynamicism
- Introduction: An Alternative View on Mind
- Symbols versus Networks
- Neural Networks
- Classical versus Connectionist Architectures
- Fodor and Pylyshyn Contra Networks: No Combinatorial Structure
- Connectionist Responses
- The Third Contender: Dynamicism: Representations Abandoned?
- Robots
- The ‘Watt Governor’: A Non-Representational Paradigm
- Dynamicism Contra Connectionism
- Dynamical Systems: Coupled and Continuous
- Some Problems with Dynamical Models
- The Value of Representations
- Neurophilosophy and Naturalism
- Reduction Changes the Explananda
- Neurosemantics: Meaning and Representations
- Body Maps, Neural Models and the Sense of Self
- The Elimination of Folk Psychology
- Conclusion: Three Views of Mind: Symbols, Networks or Dynamical Systems?
- Further Reading
- Chapter 9: The Extended Mind
- Introduction
- Evolutionary Psychology: Adaptations as Explanations
- Adaptation and the Mind
- An Illustration of Evolutionary Explanation: Moral Sentiments
- To Sum Up
- Spurious Generalization
- The Problem of ‘How-Possible Stories’: History is Indispensable
- To Sum Up
- Mind in Action: Uniting Brain, Body and World
- The Embodied and World-Embedded Mind in Action
- On-Line Strategies
- Artificial Life
- A One-and-Only Approach or a Multiple Exploitation of Methods?
- The Body in the Mind
- The Phenomenology of the Body
- Metaphors in Thinking and Speaking
- Philosophy in the Flesh
- Beyond the Individual Mind: Cultural and Linguistic Origins
- Vygotsky on the Social Origins of Mind
- Sociocultural and ‘Situated Cognition’, Vygotskian Style
- Hutchins: Cognition in the Wild is Distributed Cognition
- Wittgenstein on the Nature of Language and Mind
- The Brain Does not Think
- Conclusion
- Further Reading
- Chapter 10: Some Issues at the Interface of Philosophy and Psychology Revisited
- Intentionality
- Intentionality as a Feature of the Language of Thought
- Dennett's Solution: Intentionality as a Stance
- Intentionality as a Feature of Information
- Intentionality as a Biological Feature
- Searle's Biological View
- Intentionality as ‘Being in the World’
- Folk Psychology
- Folk Psychology and Reduction (1): Syntactic Reductionism
- Folk Psychology and Reduction (2): Pragmatists Dismantling Folk Psychology
- Folk Psychology and Reduction (3): If Connectionism Wins, Folk Psychology Loses?
- Different Job Descriptions
- What is Mind-Reading? Theory Theory and Simulation Theory
- Folk Psychology and Reduction (4): Naturalizing Mind?
- To Sum Up
- Mental Causation
- The Problem of Mental Causation: The Place of Mind in the Physical Universe
- Thinking Causes?
- Agency
- Anomalous Monism: Mental Events are Physical Events
- Mental Causation, Metaphysics, and Explanation
- Free Will
- Reasons and Causes Revisited
- Free Will
- Three Conditions
- Compatibilism and Incompatibilism
- Dennett's Naturalistic Account
- To Sum Up
- Consciousness
- Consciousness and Qualia
- Thomas Nagel on the Irreducibility of First-Person Experience
- Jackson's Story about Mary, the Colour-Blind Scientist
- McGinn and the Mysterious Property P
- Why Can't We Grasp P?
- Dennett's Multiple Drafts Model of Consciousness
- No Qualia and no Self
- Churchland: It is Nothing but a Special Pathway of Knowing
- Damasio and the Neurobiology of Consciousness and Emotions
- To Sum Up
- Conclusion: Mind and Science
- Further Reading
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Back Matter
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