Humans, like other primates, are intensely social creatures. One of the major functions of our brains must be to enable us to be as skilful in social interactions as we are in our interactions with the physical world (e.g. recognising objects and grasping them). Furthermore, any differences between human brains and those of our nearest relatives, the great apes, are likely to be linked to our unique achievements in social interaction and communication rather than our motor or perceptual skills. Unique to humans is the ability to mentalise (or mind read), that is to perceive and communicate mental states, such as beliefs and desires. A key problem facing science is to uncover the biological mechanisms underlying our ability to read other minds and to show how these mechanisms evolved. To solve this problem we need to do experiments in which people (or animals) interact with one another rather than behaving in isolation. Such experiments are now being conducted in increasing numbers and many of the leading exponents of such experiments have contributed to this volume. 'The Neuroscience of Social Interactions' will be an important step in uncovering the biological mechanisms underlying social interactions - undoubtedly one of the major programmes for neuroscience in the 21st century.

Current primate research has yielded stunning results that not only threaten our underlying assumptions about the cognitive and communicative abilities of nonhuman primates, but also bring into question what it means to be human. At the forefront of this research, Sue Savage-Rumbaugh recently has achieved a scientific breakthrough of impressive proportions. Her work with Kanzi, a laboratory-reared bonobo, has led to Kanzi's acquisition of linguistic and cognitive skills similar to those of a two and a half year-old human child. Apes, Language, and the Human Mind skillfully combines a fascinating narrative of the Kanzi research with incisive critical analysis of the research's broader linguistic, psychological, and anthropological implications. The first part of the book provides a detailed, personal account of Kanzi's infancy, youth, and upbringing, while the second part addresses the theoretical, conceptual, and methodological issues raised by the Kanzi research. The authors discuss the challenge to the foundations of modern cognitive science presented by the Kanzi research; the methods by which we represent and evaluate the abilities of both primates and humans; and the implications which ape language research has for the study of the evolution of human language. Sure to be controversial, this exciting new volume offers a radical revision of the sciences of language and mind, and will be important reading for all those working in the fields of primatology, anthropology, linguistics, philosophy of mind, and cognitive and developmental psychology.

A new field of collective intelligence has emerged in the last few years, prompted by a wave of digital technologies that make it possible for organizations and societies to think at large scale. This "bigger mind"--human and machine capabilities working together--has the potential to solve the great challenges of our time. So why do smart technologies not automatically lead to smart results? Gathering insights from diverse fields, including philosophy, computer science, and biology, Big Mind reveals how collective intelligence can guide corporations, governments, universities, and societies to make the most of human brains and digital technologies. Geoff Mulgan explores how collective intelligence has to be consciously organized and orchestrated in order to harness its powers. He looks at recent experiments mobilizing millions of people to solve problems, and at groundbreaking technology like Google Maps and Dove satellites. He also considers why organizations full of smart people and machines can make foolish mistakes--from investment banks losing billions to intelligence agencies misjudging geopolitical events--and shows how to avoid them. Highlighting differences between environments that stimulate intelligence and those that blunt it, Mulgan shows how human and machine intelligence could solve challenges in business, climate change, democracy, and public health. But for that to happen we'll need radically new professions, institutions, and ways of thinking. Informed by the latest work on data, web platforms, and artificial intelligence, Big Mind shows how collective intelligence could help us survive and thrive.

Figurative communication (the use of metaphor, metonymy, hyperbole and irony) provides economy of expression, clarity, persuasiveness, politeness, evaluation, and communication of emotions. However, it also increases the potential for misunderstanding in situations when people lack shared background knowledge. This book combines theoretical frameworks with empirical studies that measure the effectiveness of different approaches to the use of figurative language in advertisements, to show how to maximise the benefits of creative metaphor and metonymy in global advertising. It highlights how subtle differences in colour, layout, and combinations of different kinds of figurative language affect the reception and appreciation of creative advertising, shedding new light on the nature of figurative communication itself. With a balance between theory, experiments and practical case studies, this book is accessible for academics in linguistics and communication studies, as well as advertising and marketing professionals.

In this unique exploration of the mysteries of the human brain, Roger Bartra shows that consciousness is a phenomenon that occurs not only in the mind but also in an external network, a symbolic system. He argues that the symbolic systems created by humans in art, language, in cooking or in dress, are the key to understanding human consciousness. Placing culture at the centre of his analysis, Bartra brings together findings from anthropology and cognitive science and offers an original vision of the continuity between the brain and its symbolic environment. The book is essential reading for neurologists, cognitive scientists and anthropologists alike.

Through Our Eyes Only? is an immensely engaging exploration of one of the greatest remaining biological mysteries: the possibility of conscious experiences in non-human animals. Dawkins argues that the idea of consciousness in other species has now progressed from a vague possibility to a plausible, scientifically respectable view. Written in an accessible and entertaining style, this book aims to show how near -- and how far -- we are to understanding what goes on in the minds of other animals. 'Her approach ... is impeccable ... Her writing is highly accessible, lively and illustrative.' - Booklist on the hardback edition.

Artificial intelligence, or AI, is a cross-disciplinary approach to understanding, modeling, and creating intelligence of various forms. It is a critical branch of cognitive science, and its influence is increasingly being felt in other areas, including the humanities. AI applications are transforming the way we interact with each other and with our environment, and work in artificially modeling intelligence is offering new insights into the human mind and revealing new forms mentality can take. This volume of original essays presents the state of the art in AI, surveying the foundations of the discipline, major theories of mental architecture, the principal areas of research, and extensions of AI such as artificial life. With a focus on theory rather than technical and applied issues, the volume will be valuable not only to people working in AI, but also to those in other disciplines wanting an authoritative and up-to-date introduction to the field.

Luciano Floridi presents a book that will set the agenda for the philosophy of information. PI is the philosophical field concerned with (1) the critical investigation of the conceptual nature and basic principles of information, including its dynamics, utilisation, and sciences, and (2) the elaboration and application of information-theoretic and computational methodologies to philosophical problems. This book lays down, for the first time, the conceptual foundations for this new area of research. It does so systematically, by pursuing three goals. Its metatheoretical goal is to describe what the philosophy of information is, its problems, approaches, and methods. Its introductory goal is to help the reader to gain a better grasp of the complex and multifarious nature of the various concepts and phenomena related to information. Its analytic goal is to answer several key theoretical questions of great philosophical interest, arising from the investigation of semantic information.

Our sense that a waltz is "in three" or a blues song is "in four with a shuffle" comes from our sense of musical meter. Hearing in Time explores the metric aspect of our musical experience from a psychological point of view. Musical meter is taken as a musically-specific instance entrainment, that is, our more general ability to synchronize our actions to the rhythms around us. As such, musical meter is subject to a number of fundamental perceptual and cognitive constraints. These constraints are the cornerstones of Hearing in Time's account of musical meter. Hearing in Time also takes into account the fact that listening to music, like many other rhythmic activities, is something that we do a lot. It also approaches musical meter in the context of music as it is actually performed, with nuances of timing and dynamics, rather than as a theoretical ideal. Hearing in Time's approach to meter is not based on any particular musical style or cultural practice, and so it discusses musical examples from a wide range of musical styles and cultures-from Beethoven and Bach to Brubeck and Ghanaian (Ewe) drumming. In taking this broad approach a number of fundamental similarities between a variety of different metric phenomena-such as the difference between so-called simple versus complex or additive meters-become apparent. Hearing in Time is written for musicians, musicologists, music theorists and psychologists who are interested in rhythm and meter. Only a modest ability read a musical score is presumed, and most musical examples are taken from familiar popular and classical repertory.

Previously, artificial neural networks have been used to capture only the informal properties of music. However, cognitive scientist Michael Dawson found that by training artificial neural networks to make basic judgments concerning tonal music, such as identifying the tonic of a scale or the quality of a musical chord, the networks revealed formal musical properties that differ dramatically from those typically presented in music theory. For example, where Western music theory identifies twelve distinct notes or pitch-classes, trained artificial neural networks treat notes as if they belong to only three of four different pitch-classes, a wildly different interpretation of the components of tonal music. Intended to introduce readers to the use of artificial neural networks in the study of music, this volume contains numerous case studies and research findings that address problems related to identifying scales, keys, classifying musical chords, and learning jazz chord progressions. A detailed analysis of networks is provided for each case study which together demonstrate that focusing on the internal structure of trained networks could yield important contributions to the field of music cognition.

Human beings are competitive. We want to know who is the strongest, who is the richest, and who is the cleverest of all. Some situations, like ranking people based on height, can be ranked in objective ways. However, many "Top Ten" lists are based on subjective categorization and give only the illusion of objectivity. In fact, we don't always want to be seen objectively since we don't mind having a better image or rank than deserved. Ranking: The Unwritten Rules of the Social Game We All Play applies scientific theories to everyday experience by raising and answering questions like: Are college ranking lists objective? How do we rank and rate countries based on their fragility, level of corruption, or even happiness? How do we find the most relevant web pages? How are employees ranked? This book is for people who have a neighbor with a fancier car; employees, who are being ranked by their supervisors; managers, who are involved in ranking but may have qualms about the process; businesspeople interested in creating better visibility for their companies; scientists, writers, artists, and other competitors who would like to see themselves at the top of a success list; or college students who are just preparing to enter a new phase of social competition. Readers will engage in an intellectual adventure to better understand the difficulties of navigating between objectivity and subjectivity and to better identify and modify their place in real and virtual communities by combining human and computational intelligence. Translation editions available in German, Korean, Japanese, Complex Chinese, and Simplified Chinese.

From self-help to medication, therapy, and cognitive neuroscience, this book traces the uses and limits of psychology. Offering a systematic exploration of the ways in which psychology is used in contemporary society, it refines our understanding of the extent of the field. In addition to conceptual analysis of how science, truth, biology, mind, and meaning intersect and interact in the mind sciences, A Suspicious Science draws from history and anthropology to articulate an interdisciplinary multi-level form of psychology that may serve to orient the field. The book synthesizes debates in psychology and philosophy concerning methodology and the nature of explanation with debates about its practical context as a human science. Ultimately, it suggests psychology provides us myths and rituals that ground a particular sense of meaning and motivation in our lives. By aligning cultural, emotional, and philosophical uses of psychology, this book clarifies a synoptic, humanistic model of the mind within the human sciences.

Knowing where things are seems effortless. Yet our brains devote tremendous computational power to figuring out the simplest details about spatial relationships. Going to the grocery store or finding our cell phone requires sleuthing and coordination across different sensory and motor domains. Making Space" traces this mental detective work to explain how the brain creates our sense of location. But it goes further, to make the case that spatial processing permeates all our cognitive abilities, and that the brain s systems for thinking about space may be the systems of thought itself.

Our senses measure energy in the form of light, sound, and pressure on the skin, and our brains evaluate these measurements to make inferences about objects and boundaries. Jennifer Groh describes how eyes detect electromagnetic radiation, how the brain can locate sounds by measuring differences of less than one one-thousandth of a second in how long they take to reach each ear, and how the ear s balance organs help us monitor body posture and movement. The brain synthesizes all this neural information so that we can navigate three-dimensional space.

But the brain s work doesn t end there. Spatial representations do double duty in aiding memory and reasoning. This is why it is harder to remember how to get somewhere if someone else is driving, and why, if we set out to do something and forget what it was, returning to the place we started can jog our memory. In making space the brain uses powers we did not know we have."

If reason is what makes us human, then why do we humans often behave so irrationally? Taking us from desert ants to Aristotle, cognitive psychologists Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber explore how our 'flawed superpower' of reason works, how it doesn't, and how it evolved to help us develop as social beings. 'Original and provocative ... likely to have a big impact on our understanding of ourselves' Steven Pinker 'Brilliant, elegant and compelling ... turns reason's weaknesses into strengths, arguing that its supposed flaws are actually design features that work remarkably well ... A timely and necessary book' Julian Baggini, Financial Times 'Hugo Mercier and Dan Sperber have solved one of the most important and longstanding puzzles in psychology' Jonathan Haidt 'Reason is more likely to confirm things that we want to be true, or which we already believe. So why does it exist? This book provides the answer' Alex Dean, Prospect

When little things have big impacts. This book is for anyone who feels that they're sleepwalking through life, looking for answers to challenging emotions and the practical tools to begin living the life they want. 'How are you really feeling? A bit blah, meh or simply 'I don't actually know'. If this is your honest, knot-in-the-throat response, take a moment - breathe - and let me reassure you that it's not you, it's what's happened to you over the years. You can't quite put your finger on it, but somehow you just don't feel like you're thriving or truly participating in your own life. This is the result of a build-up of life's scrapes, papercuts and bruises that have left you feeling simply 'not ok'. Emotional illiteracy, microaggressions, challenging familial relationships, toxic positivity and gaslighting are some examples of what I call 'Tiny T' trauma - the impact of which often leads to problems such as high-functioning anxiety, languishing, perfectionism, comfort eating and sleep disturbance, to name but a few. We have been fooled into believing that 'Tiny T' trauma doesn't matter. There always seem to be huge, intractable problems in the world, so we tend to overlook those small, everyday injuries that drill down to your core. This leaves us with an undercurrent of constant melancholy and niggling pinpricks of anxiety, all wrapped up in the film of other people's Insta-perfect lives. But life doesn't have to be experienced in this suffocating way; we owe it to ourselves to develop Awareness, Acceptance, and take Action on our Tiny T trauma, no matter how 'small', and to start living every day as we deserve.'

Metaphor theory has shifted from asking whether metaphor is 'conceptual' or 'linguistic' to debating whether it is 'embodied' or 'discursive'. Although recent work in the social and cognitive sciences has yielded clear opportunities to resolve that dispute, the divide between discourse- and cognition-oriented approaches has remained. To unite the field, this book brings together leading metaphor researchers from a number of disciplines. It collects major arguments and presents a wide variety of empirical evidence, placing special emphasis on the embodiment and socio-cultural embeddedness of cognition, as well as the multi-modal and social-interactive nature of communication. It shows that metaphor theory can only profit from an approach that takes multiple perspectives into consideration and tries to account for findings yielded by multiple methodologies. By doing so, it works towards a dynamic, multi-dimensional, socio-cognitive model of metaphor that goes beyond what research traditions have separately achieved.

Senses and Sensation: Critical and Primary Sources offers a comprehensive collection of key writings essential to anyone wishing to gain a critical understanding of sensory studies. The four volumes include 101 essays from leading scholars in the humanities, social sciences, arts and design, biology, psychology and the neurosciences.Drawing upon historical and contemporary texts from a wide range of sources, this set is inspired by the sensory turn in the humanities, social sciences and fine arts which has challenged the monopoly that psychology formerly held over the study of senses and sensation. It also builds upon the revolution in psychology and the neurosciences which has led to an increased emphasis on the interaction and integration of the senses, in place of the one-sense-at-a-time approach.Ordered by discipline, the volumes cover geography and anthropology, history and sociology, biology, psychology and neuroscience, and art and design. Each volume is separately introduced and the essays structured into coherent sections on specific themes.

In this classic work, John Steinbruner argues that the time is ripe for exploration of a new theoretical perspective on the decision-making process in government. He suggests that the cybernetic theory of decision as developed in such diverse fields as information theory, mathematical logic, and behavioral psychology generates a systematic but non-rational analysis that seems to explain quite naturally decisions that are puzzling when viewed from the rational perspective. When combined with the basic understanding of human mental operations developed in cognitive psychology, the cybernetic theory of decision presents a striking picture of how decision makers deal with the intense uncertainty and fundamental value conflicts that arise in bureaucratic politics. To illustrate the advantages of using cybernetic theory, Steinbruner analyzes the issue of sharing nuclear weapons among the NATO allies.

Recent years have witnessed a revival of research in the interplay between cognition and emotion. The reasons for this renaissance are many and varied. In the first place, emotion theorists have come to recognise the pivotal role of cognitive factors in virtually all aspects of the emotion process, and to rely on basic cognitive factors insight in creating new models of affective space. Also, the successful application of cognitive therapies to affective disorders has promoted clinical psychologists to work towards a clearer understanding of the connections between cognitive processes and emotional problems. And whereas the cognitive revolutionaries of the 1960s regarded emotions with suspicion, viewing them as nagging sources of 'hot' noise in an otherwise cool, rational, and computer-like system of information processing, cognitive researchers of the 1990s regard emotions with respect, owing to their potent and predictable effects on tasks as diverse as object perception, episodic recall, and risk assessment. These intersecting lines of interest have made cognition and emotion one of the most active and rapidly developing areas within psychological science.

Sexual harassment in the workplace, date rape, and domestic violence dominate the headlines and have recently sparked scholarly debates about the nature of the sexes. Concurrently, the scientific community is conducting research in topics of sex and gender issues. Indeed, more research is being done on the topics of sexual conflict and coercion than at any other time in the history of the social sciences. Despite this attention, it is clear that these issues are being addressed from two essentially different perspectives: one is labeled "feminist," while the other, viewed as antithetical to the feminist movement, is called "evolutionary psychology," which emphasizes the history of reproductive strategies in understanding conflict between the sexes. This book brings together leading experts from both sides of the debate in order to discover how each could offer insights lacking in the other. The editors' overall goal is to show how the feminist and evolutionary approaches are complementary despite their evident differences, then provide an integration and synthesis. In fact, several of the contributors to this unique volume consider themselves advocates of both approaches. As a stimulating presentation of the dynamics of sex, power, and conflict--and a pioneering rapprochement of the diverse tendencies within the scientific community-- this book will attract a wide audience in both psychology and women's studies fields.

Michio Kaku, the international bestselling author of Physics of the Impossible, gives us a stunning and provocative vision of the future of the mind Recording memories, mind reading, videotaping our dreams, mind control, avatars, and telekinesis - no longer are these feats of the mind solely the province of overheated science fiction. As Michio Kaku reveals, with the latest advances in brain science and recent astonishing breakthroughs in technology, they already exist. In The Future of the Mind, the New York Times-bestselling author takes us on a stunning, provocative and exhilarating tour of the top laboratories around the world to meet the scientists who are already revolutionising the way we think about the brain - and ourselves. 'Summons up the sheer wonder of science' - Daily Telegraph 'Compelling ... Kaku thinks with great breadth, and the vistas he presents us are worth the trip' - New York Times Book Review Michio Kaku is a professor of physics at the City University of New York, cofounder of string field theory, and the author of several widely acclaimed science books, including Hyperspace, Beyond Einstein, Physics of the Impossible, and Physics of the Future.

Draw In Order to See is the first book to survey the history of architectural design using the latest research in neuroscience and embodied cognition. At present, among the dozens of books on architectural drawing, design theory, methodologies, model making, CAAD, and planning, there is no book that specifically looks at the history of representation as a reflection of cognitive habits among individuals and groups of architects. As a historian and a practicing architect, Mark Hewitt has a unique point of view, that has enabled him to study the design practices of many architects during various eras, beginning in the Renaissance and stretching into the late 20th century. His earlier published books have touched on subjects related to design practice, as many have dealt with the lives of architects and designers. In addition, he has written dozens of biographies of architects, published essays on architectural representation, and wrote a master's thesis on visual perception and architecture. Hewitt has dedicated more than 30 years to writing about the process of conception (or visualisation) of buildings in the brain. Researchers on that subject now consistently cite one of his earliest studies on drawings and modes of conception. This book pursues that line of inquiry with the new discoveries about visual perception, cognition and embodiment that have revolutionised brain science. Hewitt believes that looking historically at how architects have designed, a brain-based practice developed during and after the Renaissance, once drawings became sophisticated enough to provide feedback for perception and memory in the cortex. His contention is that disegno, as invented in Italy during the time of Leonardo and Michelangelo, initiated that system, and that it was translated into a curriculum during the rise of Beaux Arts institutions prior to the 1920s, after which the Bauhaus system replaced it completely with what we have today.