Natural and Artificial Minds

Edited by Robert G. Burton

Subjects: Cognitive Science
Series: SUNY series, Scientific Studies in Natural and Artificial Intelligence
Paperback : 9780791415085, 245 pages, August 1993
Hardcover : 9780791415078, 245 pages, August 1993

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Table of contents

Preface

1. Approaches to Mind

Robert G. Burton

2. On the Nature of Theories: A Neurocomputational Perspective

Paul M. Churchland

3. Connectionism and the Future of Folk Psychology

William Bechtel and A. A. Abrahamsen

4. Squirrel Monkeys, Concepts, and Logic

Roger K. Thomas

5. Connecting the Cognitive and the Cultural: Artificial Minds as Methodological Devices in the Study of the Sociocultural

Robert N. McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson

6. Without Perception, There Is No Knowledge: Implications for Artificial Intelligence

Ulric Neisser

7. On the Phenomenology of Remembering: The Neglected Case of Place Memory

Edward S. Casey

8. The Owl and the Electric Encyclopedia

Brian Cantwell Smith

9. Reduction, Elimination, and Strategic Interdependence

Robert G. Burton

Contributors

Description

This book describes and explores six current approaches to the study of mind: the neuroscientific, the behavioral, the competence approach, the ecological, the phenomenological, and the computational. No other book in cognitive science covers such a broad range of research programs and topics in such a balanced fashion. The first chapter is a mini-history and philosophy of psychology which reviews some of the scientific developments and philosophical arguments behind these six different approaches. Each subsequent chapter presents work that is on the frontiers of research in its field.

Robert G. Burton is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Georgia.

Reviews

"One rarely sees books in cognitive science that include the ecological, phenomenological, and behavioral approaches to the study of the mind. Cognitive science is currently one of the more exciting and productive areas of interdisciplinary research, and this book makes an important contribution to this field. I especially think that philosophers of the mind and psychology could learn a great deal about the range of approaches to the study of mind that are being practiced. Many workers in these areas are not aware that there are psychologists working on research that is outside the strictly functionalist/computationalist paradigm." — Stephen M. Downes, Northwestern University