Bücher der Reihe Studies in Brain and Mind

This book is focused on the examination of the particular relationship between developments in neuroscience and commonsense concepts, such as free will, personal identity, privacy, etc., which feature prominently in moral discourse.

This book scrutinizes the practice of sailing and its relation to philosophy of mind. Sailing brings about a peculiar human-artifact interaction which can lead to unexplored research paths. The idea behind this collection is that this interaction is better scrutinized by sailor scientists/philosophers to open up new possible pathways in research. Fascinating theoretical breakthroughs have been provided by observing sailing practices with the most well-known being Hutchins¿ introduction in cognitive science of the concept of ¿distributed cognition.¿ However, in times past, sailing has both fueled philosophical metaphors, from Theseus¿ ship to Platös image of the intellect as the boatperson of the soul, and inspired philosophers¿ views (as happened to Herder during a stormy sea trip). The ecology of sailing is highly constrained: sailboats move at the surface between a compressible fluid and an uncompressible fluid. Wind originates in certain specificcircumstances. Only certain sequences of actions are possible to take advantage of this ecology. The ontology of sailing is both of the boat and of the ocean/wind system. It highlights the fact that sailboats have been for centuries arguably the most complex technological artifacts in each culture that developed them, precisely because the environment they are engaging is so peculiar and demanding - almost the precise dual of Sapiens¿ adaptive environment.This volume will appeal to philosophers of mind, cognitive psychologists, and marine professionals.

In this book, Matej Kohar demonstrates how the new mechanistic account of explanation can be used to support a non-representationalist view of explanations in cognitive neuroscience, and therefore can bring new conceptual tools to the non-representationalist arsenal. Kohar focuses on the explanatory relevance of representational content in constitutive mechanistic explanations typical in cognitive neuroscience. The work significantly contributes to two areas of literature: 1) the debate between representationalism and non-representationalism, and 2) the literature on mechanistic explanation.Kohar begins with an introduction to the mechanistic theory of explanation, focusing on the analysis of mechanistic constitution as the basis of explanatory relevance in constitutive mechanistic explanation. He argues that any viable analysis of representational contents implies that content is not constitutively relevant to cognitive phenomena. The author also addresses objections against his argument and concludes with an examination of the consequences of his account for both traditional cognitive neuroscience and non-representationalist alternatives. This book is of interest to readers in philosophy of mind, cognitive science and neuroscience.

This volume focuses on the emergent field of neuroethics comparing and contrasting how two democracies, Canada and the United States, have begun adapting public policy design to better fit human minds. The book focuses on issues relevant to all members of the general population and discusses a series of policy issues arranged roughly in the order in which they become relevant in a typical person's lifetime. After the introductory chapter each chapter considers an area of public policy particularly relevant to a different stage of life-from early childhood education policy, to policies for higher education and the workplace, to end of life decisions in living wills and advance directives.    The author puts forth that making the shift towards more neurologically appropriate policy will likely be a gradual process hampered primarily by two issues. The first is the inability of neuroscientists to come to agreement on increasingly sophisticated research findings. The second issue points out that bringing policy and neurology into a more synchronous relationship requires a commitment to prolonged effort involves the largely unrecognized reality of entrenched neurological interests.   The first chapter introduces the concept of disconnect between policy design with traditional understandings of the brain and goes on to highlight developments in the science of human neurology in recent years. To help contextualize the book, examples of neurological misperceptions are explored in this introductory chapter. Chapters Two through Eleven each explores a specific type of policy, incorporating understandings of the human brain which, modern neuroscience suggests, are debatable.

This book scrutinizes the practice of sailing and its relation to philosophy of mind. Sailing brings about a peculiar human-artifact interaction which can lead to unexplored research paths. The idea behind this collection is that this interaction is better scrutinized by sailor scientists/philosophers to open up new possible pathways in research. Fascinating theoretical breakthroughs have been provided by observing sailing practices with the most well-known being Hutchins¿ introduction in cognitive science of the concept of ¿distributed cognition.¿ However, in times past, sailing has both fueled philosophical metaphors, from Theseus¿ ship to Platös image of the intellect as the boatperson of the soul, and inspired philosophers¿ views (as happened to Herder during a stormy sea trip). The ecology of sailing is highly constrained: sailboats move at the surface between a compressible fluid and an uncompressible fluid. Wind originates in certain specificcircumstances. Only certain sequences of actions are possible to take advantage of this ecology. The ontology of sailing is both of the boat and of the ocean/wind system. It highlights the fact that sailboats have been for centuries arguably the most complex technological artifacts in each culture that developed them, precisely because the environment they are engaging is so peculiar and demanding - almost the precise dual of Sapiens¿ adaptive environment.This volume will appeal to philosophers of mind, cognitive psychologists, and marine professionals.

This volume brings together new papers advancing contemporary debates in foundational, conceptual, and methodological issues in cognitive neuroscience. The book also highlights the metaphysical challenges raised by recent neuroscience and demonstrates the relation between neuroscience and mechanistic philosophy.

This volume brings together new papers advancing contemporary debates in foundational, conceptual, and methodological issues in cognitive neuroscience. The book also highlights the metaphysical challenges raised by recent neuroscience and demonstrates the relation between neuroscience and mechanistic philosophy.

In addition, this investigation considers the relation between the inf/ref neurocognitive theory and other accounts of semantic cognition proposed in the field of neurosemantics, as well as some potential implications of the theory for clinical neuroscience and the philosophy of semantics.

This book explores the relationship between schizophrenia and common sense. Others explore phenomenological and Wittgensteinian theories. The book features papers from the Schizophrenia and Common Sense International Workshop, held at New University of Lisbon, November 2015.

In this book, the author develops a new form of structural realism and deals with the problem of representation. The work combines two distinguished developments of the Semantic View of Theories, namely Structural Realism (SR), a flourishing theory from contemporary philosophy of science, and Ronald Giere and colleagues' Cognitive Models of Science approach (CMSA).Readers will see how replacing the model-theoretic structures that are at issue in SR with connectionist networks and activations patterns (which are the formal tools of computational neuroscience) helps us to deal with the problem of representation. The author suggests that cognitive structures are not only the precise formal tools for regimenting the structure of scientific theories but also the tools that the biological brain uses to capture the essential features (i.e., structures) of its environment. Therefore, replacing model-theoretic structures with cognitive structures allows us to account for the theories-reality relationship on the basis of the most reliable theories of neurology. This is how a new form of SR, called Cognitive Structural Realism (CSR) is introduced through this book, which articulates and defends CSR, and shows how two diverging branches of SVT can be reconciled.This ground-breaking work will particularly appeal to people who work in the philosophy of science, philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences.

This book is focused on the examination of the particular relationship between developments in neuroscience and commonsense concepts, such as free will, personal identity, privacy, etc., which feature prominently in moral discourse.

This book explores the relationship between schizophrenia and common sense. Others explore phenomenological and Wittgensteinian theories. The book features papers from the Schizophrenia and Common Sense International Workshop, held at New University of Lisbon, November 2015.

This monograph examines the metaphysical commitments of the new mechanistic philosophy, a way of thinking that has returned to center stage.

This volume is product of the third online consciousness conference, held at http://consciousnessonline.com in February and March 2011.

Modest Nonconceptualism

This book is a collection of essays exploring some classical dimensions of mind both from the perspective of an empirically-informed philosophy and from the point of view of a philosophically-informed psychology. The result is a philosophically and scientifically up-to-date collection of "cartographies of the mind".

The essential puzzle of consciousness is how the electro-chemical activity constantly occurring in the brain translates into the conscious experience we enjoy.

This volume is product of the third online consciousness conference, held at http://consciousnessonline.com in February and March 2011.

This book is a collection of essays exploring some classical dimensions of mind both from the perspective of an empirically-informed philosophy and from the point of view of a philosophically-informed psychology. The result is a philosophically and scientifically up-to-date collection of "cartographies of the mind".

Focusing on a series of methodological difficulties swirling around consciousness research, the contributors to this volume suggest that 'consciousness' is, in fact, not a wholly viable scientific concept

This book is an edited collection of papers from international experts in philosophy and psychology concerned with time.

This book examines the concept of " Neurosemantics", a term currently used in two different senses: the informational meaning of the physical processes in the neural circuits, and semantics in its classical sense, as the meaning of language, explained in terms of neural processes.

This book is an edited collection of papers from international experts in philosophy and psychology concerned with time.

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.

To tell a friend that I think Greg won a stunning victory, I must evidently rely on various bits of information stored in my memory, including who my friends are, who Greg is, what he won, and what natural languages I share with my friend.

Philosophy and Neuroscience: A Ruthlessly Reductive Account is the first book-length treatment of philosophical issues and implications in current cellular and molecular neuroscience.