The Mind As a Scientific Object: Between Brain and CultureChristina E. Erneling, David M. Johnson What holds together the various fields that are supposed to consititute the general intellectual discipline that people now call cognitive science? In this book, Erneling and Johnson identify two problems with defining this discipline. First, some theorists identify the common subject matter as the mind, but scientists and philosophers have not been able to agree on any single, satisfactory answer to the question of what the mind is. Second, those who speculate about the general characteristics that belong to cognitive science tend to assume that all the particular fields falling under the rubric--psychology, linguistics, biology, and son on--are of roughly equal value in their ability to shed light on the nature of mind. This book argues that all the cognitive science disciplines are not equally able to provide answers to ontological questions about the mind, but rather that only neurophysiology and cultural psychology are suited to answer these questions. However, since the cultural account of mind has long been ignored in favor of the neurophysiological account, Erneling and Johnson bring together contributions that focus especially on different versions of the cultural account of the mind. |
Contents
3 | |
13 | |
Is the Study of Mind Continuous with the Rest of Science? | 119 |
Eliminative Materialism Sound or Mistaken? | 191 |
Is Mind Just Another Name for the Brain and What the Brain Does? | 245 |
Does Evolution Provide a Key to the Scientific Study of Mind? | 317 |
Is the Mind a Cultural Entity? | 397 |
Rationality Cultural or Natural? | 451 |
519 | |
527 | |
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activity animals argue argument assumption attention Bakhtin behavior beliefs biological brain Bruner Cambridge Cartesian causal Chalmers chapter Churchland claim cognitive neuropsychology cognitive neuroscience Cognitive Revolution cognitive science complex computational conception Connectionism connectionist consciousness cultural Dennett Descartes Descartes’s deuterostome dialogical distinction dogmatism dualism eliminative materialism eliminativism eliminativist emergence emotions empirical entities epiphenomenal Erneling evolution evolutionary example existence experience experimenters explain fact Fodor folk psychology functionally discrete genetic human idea Ilyenkov independent causal role individual interaction Kanzi kind language linguistic logical means mechanisms memory mental mind mind-body mind-body problem modularity modules natural science neural neuropsychology one’s ontological organization Oxford perception phenomena philosophical physical possible problem processes properties propositional propositional attitudes psychology qualia question rationality reason representations RS&G scientific object scientists semantic sense social sociobiology soul specific structures subpersonal supervenience theory things thought tion understanding University Press York