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What are the grounds for the distinction between the mental and the physical? What is it the relation between ascribing mental states to an organism and understanding its behavior? Are animals and complex systems vehicles of inner evolutionary environments? Is there a difference between personal and sub-personal level processes in the brain? Answers to these and other questions were developed in Daniel Dennett’s first book, Content and Consciousness (1969), where he sketched a unified theoretical framework for views that are now considered foundational in cognitive science and philosophy of mind. Content and Consciousness Revisited is devoted to reconsider the ideas and ideals introduced in Dennett’s seminal book, by covering its fundamental concepts, hypotheses and approaches and taking into account the findings and progress which have taken place during more than four decades. This book includes original and critical contributions about the relations between science and philosophy, the personal/sub-personal level distinction, intelligence, learning, intentionality, rationality, propositional attitudes, among other issues of scientific and philosophical interest. Each chapter embraces an updated approach to several disciplines, like cognitive science, cognitive psychology, philosophy of mind and cognitive psychiatry.
Essays on the contributions to historical and contemporary evolutionary theory of the Baldwin effect, which postulates the effects of learned behaviors on evolutionary change.
Understanding the significance of adult play in the life of modern societies Within the social sciences, few matters are as significant as the study of human play--or as neglected. In Play Reconsidered, rather than viewing play simply as a preoccupation of the young and a vehicle for skill development, Thomas S. Henricks argues that it’s a social and cultural phenomenon of adult life, enveloped by wider structures and processes of society. In that context, he argues that a truly sociological approach to play should begin with a consideration of the largely overlooked writings on play and play-related topics by some of the classic sociological thinkers of the twentieth century. Henricks explores Karl Marx’s analysis of creativity in human labor, examines Emile Durkheim’s observations on the role of ritual and the formation of collective consciousness, extends Max Weber’s ideas about the process of rationalization to the realm of expressive culture and play, surveys Georg Simmel’s distinctive approach to sociology and sociability, and discusses Erving Goffman’s focus on human conduct as process and play as “encounter.” These and other discussions of the contributions of more recent sociologists are framed by an initial consideration of Johan Huizinga’s famous challenge to understand the nature and significance of play. In a closing synthesis, Henricks distinguishes play from other forms of human social expression, particularly ritual, communitas, and work.
Annotation Ann Taves addresses the subject of religious experience directly and the problems of reductionism and humanistic fears of the sciences indirectly and by example. The orientation of this book is practical more than philosophical.
The contributions to this book are original articles, representing a cross-section of current philosophical work on consciousness and thereby allowing students and readers from other disciplines to acquaint themselves with the very latest debate, so that they can then pursue their own research interests more effectively. The volume includes a bibliography on consciousness in philosophy, cognitive science and brain research, covering the last 25 years and consisting of over 1000 entries in 18 thematic sections, compiled by David Chalmers and Thomas Metzinger.
Theories of Consciousness serves both to introduce a wide array of approaches to consciousness as well as advance debate via a detailed critique of them. Philosophy students, researchers with a particular interest in cognitive science and anyone who has wondered how consciousness fits into a scientific view of the world will find this book an illuminating and fascinating read.
In the mid-1950s C.P. Snow began his campaign against the 'two cultures' - the debilitating divide, as he saw it, between traditional 'literary intellectual' culture, and the culture of the sciences, urging in its place a 'third culture' which would draw upon and integrate the resources of disciplines spanning the natural and social sciences, the arts and the humanities. Murray Smith argues that, with the ever-increasing influence of evolutionary theory and neuroscience, and the pervasive presence of digital technologies, Snow's challenge is more relevant than ever. Working out how the 'scientific' and everyday images of the world 'hang' together is no simple matter. In Film, Art, and the Third Culture, Smith explores this question in relation to the art, technology, and science of film in particular, and to the world of the arts and aesthetic activity more generally. In the first part of his book, Smith explores the general strategies and principles necessary to build a 'third cultural' or naturalized approach to film and art - one that roots itself in an appreciation of scientific knowledge and method. Smith then goes on to focus on the role of emotion in film and the other arts, as an extended experiment in the 'third cultural' integration of ideas on emotion spanning the arts, humanities and sciences. While acknowledging that not all of the questions we ask are scientific in nature, Smith contends that we cannot disregard the insights wrought by taking a naturalized approach to the aesthetics of film and the other arts.
