The conscious mind defines human existence. Many consider the brain as a computer, and they attempt to explain consciousness as emerging at a critical, but unspecified, threshold level of complex computation among neurons. The brain-as-computer model, however, fails to account for phenomenal experience and portrays consciousness as an impotent, after-the-fact epiphenomenon lacking causal power. And the brain-as-computer concept precludes even the remotest possibility of spirituality. As described throughout the history of humankind, seemingly spiritual mental phenomena including transcendent states, near-death and out-of-body experiences, and past-life memories have in recent years been well documented and treated scientifically. In addition, the brain-as-computer approach has been challenged by advocates of quantum brain biology, who are possibly able to explain, scientifically, nonlocal, seemingly spiritual mental states. Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship argues against the purely physical analysis of consciousness and for a balanced psychobiological approach. This thought-provoking volume bridges philosophy of mind with science of mind to look empirically at transcendent phenomena, such as mystic states, near-death experiences and past-life memories, that have confounded scientists for decades. Representing disciplines ranging from philosophy and history to neuroimaging and physics, and boasting a panel of expert scientists and physicians, including Andrew Newberg, Peter Fenwick, Stuart Hameroff, Mario Beauregard, Deepak Chopra, and Chris Clarke the book rigorously follows several lines of inquiry into mind-brain controversies, challenging readers to form their own conclusions-or reconsider previous ones. Key coverage includes: Objections to reductionistic materialism from the philosophical and the scientific tradition. Phenomena and the mind-brain problem. The neurobiological correlates of meditation and mindfulness. The quantum soul, a view from physics. Clinical implications of end-of-life experiences. Mediumistic experience and the mind-brain relationship. Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship is essential reading for researchers and clinicians across many disciplines, including cognitive psychology, personality and social psychology, the neurosciences, neuropsychiatry, palliative care, philosophy, and quantum physics. "This book ... brings together some precious observations about the fundamental mystery of the nature of consciousness ... It raises many questions that serve to invite each of us to be more aware of the uncertainty of our preconceptions about consciousness ... This book on the frontiers of mind-body relationships is a scholarly embodiment of creative and open-minded science." C. Robert Cloninger, MD Wallace Renard Professor of Psychiatry, Genetics, and Psychology, Washington University School of Medicine St. Louis MO

Cybersecurity and Cognitive Science provides the reader with multiple examples of interactions between cybersecurity, psychology and neuroscience. Specifically, reviewing current research on cognitive skills of network security agents (e.g., situational awareness) as well as individual differences in cognitive measures (e.g., risk taking, impulsivity, procrastination, among others) underlying cybersecurity attacks. Chapters on detection of network attacks as well as detection of cognitive engineering attacks are also included. This book also outlines various modeling frameworks, including agent-based modeling, network modeling, as well as cognitive modeling methods to both understand and improve cybersecurity.

Music-Dance explores the identity of choreomusical work, its complex authorship and its modes of reception as well as the cognitive processes involved in the reception of dance performance. Scholars of dance and music analyse the ways in which a musical score changes its prescriptive status when it becomes part of a choreographic project, the encounter between sound and motion on stage, and the intersection of listening and seeing. As well as being of interest to musicologists and choreologists considering issues such as notation, multimedia and the analysis of performance, this volume will appeal to scholars interested in applied research in the fields of cognition and neuroscience. The line-up of authors comprises representative figures of today's choreomusicology, dance historians, scholars of twentieth-century composition and specialists in cognitive science and performance studies. Among the topics covered are multimedia and the analysis of performance; the notational practice of choreographers and the parallel attempts of composers to find a graphic representation for musical gestures; and the experience of dance as a paradigm for a multimodal perception, which is investigated in terms of how the association of sound and movement triggers emotions and specific forms of cognition.

Since Darwin, Biology has been framed on the idea of evolution by natural selection, which has profoundly influenced the scientific and philosophical comprehension of biological phenomena and of our place in Nature. This book argues that contemporary biology should progress towards and revolve around an even more fundamental idea, that of autonomy. Biological autonomy describes living organisms as organised systems, which are able to self-produce and self-maintain as integrated entities, to establish their own goals and norms, and to promote the conditions of their existence through their interactions with the environment. Topics covered in this book include organisation and biological emergence, organisms, agency, levels of autonomy, cognition, and a look at the historical dimension of autonomy. The current development of scientific investigations on autonomous organisation calls for a theoretical and philosophical analysis. This can contribute to the elaboration of an original understanding of life - including human life - on Earth, opening new perspectives and enabling fecund interactions with other existing theories and approaches. This book takes up the challenge.

Colleges are becoming increasingly concerned with the quality of undergraduate instruction, and faculty are devoting more attention to improving their teaching skills. This volume will help college faculty improve their performance in the classroom. The book contains useful theoretical information on the learning styles of college students, and it presents practical information on how to teach courses in particular disciplines. The chapter authors are widely recognized as master teachers. The information at the beginning of the book summarizes and evaluates current research in cognitive psychology and student learning styles. The bulk of the volume then provides practical information on college teaching. A set of chapters stresses the advantages of different instructional methods, while other chapters are devoted to teaching particular disciplines in the arts and sciences. The book also presents information on related issues, such as working with at-risk students, classroom management, textbook selection, and grading. This professional reference will be an indispensable tool for college professors in all disciplines.

This book contributes to the developing dialogue between cognitive science and social sciences. It focuses on a central issue in both fields, i.e. the nature and the limitations of the rationality of beliefs and action. The development of cognitive science is one of the most important and fascinating intellectual advances of recent decades, and social scientists are paying increasing attention to the findings of this new branch of science that forces us to consider many classical issues related to epistemology and philosophy of action in a new light. Analysis of the concept of rationality is a leitmotiv in the history of the social sciences and has involved endless disputes. Since it is difficult to give a precise definition of this concept, and there is a lack of agreement about its meaning, it is possible to say that there is a 'mystery of rationality'. What is it to be rational? Is rationality merely instrumental or does it also involve the endorsement of values, i.e. the choice of goals? Should we consider rationality to be a normative principle or a descriptive one? Can rationality be only Cartesian or can it also be argumentative? Is rationality a conscious skill or a partly tacit one? This book, which has been written by an outstanding collection of authors, including both philosophers and social scientists, tries to make a useful contribution to the debates on these problems and shed some light on the mystery of rationality. The target audience primarily comprises researchers and experts in the field.

This book goes right into the the causes and reasons of the diversity of ways of thinking. It is about the tricks of how our thinking works and about the efforts and failures of artificial intelligence. It discusses what can and cannot be expected of `intelligent' computers, and provides an insight into the deeper layers of the mechanism of our thinking.-An enjoyable piece of reading, this thought-provoking book is also an exciting mental adventure for those with little or no computer competence at all.

This book goes right into the the causes and reasons of the diversity of ways of thinking. It is about the tricks of how our thinking works and about the efforts and failures of artificial intelligence. It discusses what can and cannot be expected of `intelligent' computers, and provides an insight into the deeper layers of the mechanism of our thinking.-An enjoyable piece of reading, this thought-provoking book is also an exciting mental adventure for those with little or no computer competence at all.

Neuroscience has raised many questions for philosophy and its traditional focus on the mind, but what does the emerging field of neurophilosophy teach us about the relationship between mind and brain? How have the new debates transformed our understanding of consciousness, the self and free will? Georg Northoff is a world-leading expert in this exciting area, and in Minding the Brain he provides a comprehensive introduction to non-reductive neurophilosophy, charting the developments of the discipline and applying its ideas to the debates that have captivated philosophers for centuries. Minding the Brain: * employs extensive pedagogy to help the reader get to grips with complex concepts * takes a transdisciplinary approach unifying science, psychology and philosophy Unearthing new ways to tackle age-old debates, Minding the Brain is a stimulating text for anyone interested in philosophy, psychology, the cognitive sciences and neuroscience.

This book sets out to integrate recent exciting research on the precursors of reading and early reading strategies adopted by children in the classroom. It aims to develop a theory about why early phonological skills are crucial in learning to read, and shows how phonological knowledge about rhymes and other units of sound helps children learn about letter sequences when beginning to be taught to read.

The authors begin by contrasting theories which suggest that children's phonological awareness is a result of the experience of learning to read and those that suggest that phonological awareness precedes, and is a causal determinant of, reading. The authors argue for a version of the second kind of theory and show that children are aware of speech units, called onset and rime, before they learn to read and spell. An important part of the argument is that children make analogies and inferences about these letter sequences in order to read and write new words.

What distinguishes good explanations in neuroscience from bad? Carl F. Craver constructs and defends standards for evaluating neuroscientific explanations that are grounded in a systematic view of what neuroscientific explanations are: descriptions of multilevel mechanisms. In developing this approach, he draws on a wide range of examples in the history of neuroscience (e.g. Hodgkin and Huxleys model of the action potential and LTP as a putative explanation for different kinds of memory), as well as recent philosophical work on the nature of scientific explanation. Readers in neuroscience, psychology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of science will find much to provoke and stimulate them in this book.

Through incisive readings of ten poets from William Wordsworth to Alice Oswald, this book shows how poets have engaged with the possibilities and pitfalls of memory. Linking poets' uses of personal, aesthetic, and collective memory, as well as history, the book provides a new critical template for understanding how literature engages with the past.

What function is played by concepts related to meaning and mereology in the cognitive sciences? How can one outline adequate simulation models for the continuous emergence of new categorization forms characterizing cognitive processes? To what extent is it possible to define new measures of meaningful complexity? How is it possible to describe synergetically the symbolic dynamics inherent in cognitive processes? What types of formal models should we use to describe the evolutionary aspects of cognition? These, the most difficult questions in cognitive science, are discussed here in 15 original essays written by distinguished scholars drawn from a variety of disciplines. The first part presents an up-to-date account of some current trends in the functional modeling of cognitive activities, the synergetic models in particular are widely discussed. The second part focuses on recent advances in complexity theory, self-organizing networks, the theory of self- reference, and the theory of self organization. The third part focuses on some methods of formal analysis that can be used to delineate consistent simulation models of cognitive activities at the perceptual, linguistic and computational levels. The volume also highlights traditional philosophical concerns about realism, the cognitivism-connectionism debate, and the role of holistic assumptions. Readership: psychologists, cognitive scientists, theorists working in complexity theory, self-organization theory, synergetics, semantics of natural language and mereology, philosophers, epistemologists.

This book offers an analysis of experimental psychology that is embedded in a general understanding of human behavior. It provides methodological self-awareness for researchers who study and use the experimental method in psychology. The book critically reviews key research areas (e.g., rule-breaking, sense of agency, free choice, task switching, task sharing, and mind wandering), examining their scope, limits, ambiguities, and implicit theoretical commitments. Topics featured in this text include: Methods of critique in experimental research Goal hierarchies and organization of a task Rule-following and rule-breaking behavior Sense of agency Free-choice tasks Mind wandering Experimental Psychology and Human Agency will be of interest to researchers and undergraduate and graduate students in the fields of experimental psychology, cognitive psychology, theoretical psychology, and critical psychology, as well as various philosophical disciplines.

The three volumes comprising Nature, Cognition and System present a representative collection of reports on current research in the major topics of system theory and cybernetics as applied to the two main classes of systems, viz. the natural and cognitive systems. The contributions emphatically present alternative reflections and creative syntheses of such time-honoured and controversial issues of the nature-cognition-system connection' which in principle and in fact form the very subject-matter of the current sciences of complexity'. In the present volume Niels Bohr's seminal idea of complementarity' has been chosen as the hinge around which these discussions, critical appraisals, alternative views, and applications, both orthodox and non-orthodox have taken place. This pivotal notion seems to exert an appeal not only upon the strictly technical or disciplinary aspects of quantum physics, but also upon the wider epistemological understanding, which is based on the role and nature of language for measurement processes, that Bohr himself seemed to apply to subjects other than physics, and which later might turn out to be of primary importance for an explanation in genuine system-scientific context. Volume II is organized into three parts. The first part contains contributions which have been written quite in the true spirit of the Copenhagen Interpretation. The second one contains those with a quite pronounced critical mood towards the orthodox theory, including the discussions among others of the problematic issues of physics and cognitive science. The third part is dedicated to the discussions of this complex nature-cognition-system connection' from the non-orthodox point of view. Thescope and depth of the contributions reveal an underlying coherence, despite the divergence in the approaches to the study of the subject, thus making this volume a useful source for researchers, practitioners, teachers and students of the variety of disciplines making up modern system theory, cybernetics and cognitive science.

This book studies the early developmental and family history of children who come to perform at the gifted IQ level during middle childhood. The authors detail their original research-the first systematic, longitudinal study of such children-and offer a theory to explain how children become intellectually gifted. Chapters examine the theory's implications for early identification and assessment as well as for parenting.

Considerable evidence indicates that religion is a motivational force in the lives of most of the world's population, and recent social and political events have placed religion center stage. Motivation is considered an essential component of any adequate answer to the question, 'Why religion?'. That question concerned early psychologists, such as Freud and James, but was relatively neglected with the ascendancy of behaviorism. It has since regained momentum as an important area of research and scholarship. In spite of the fact that motivational principles are implicit in many analytical treatments of religion, and that some articles and book chapters discuss motivation and religion, this literature is widely dispersed and confined primarily to Judeo-Christian world views. This volume of the "Advances" series presents a systematic approach to the topic, as viewed through the lens of such contemporary theories of motivation as expectancy-value, self-determination, and achievement goal theory. An international group of scholars offers a comprehensive view of how such theories help to understand religiosity and its impact on human experiences and behavior. In addition, authors consider the implications of religious experiences and behavior for motivation theory. Separately, these contributions provide unique perspectives. Collectively, they represent the prominent theoretical approaches to motivation, include the world's dominant religions, and address a wide variety of significant issues related to this very significant subject.

This book, by leading scholars, represents some of the main work in progress in biolinguistics. It offers fresh perspectives on language evolution and variation, new developments in theoretical linguistics, and insights on the relations between variation in language and variation in biology. The authors address the Darwinian questions on the origin and evolution of language from a minimalist perspective, and provide elegant solutions to the evolutionary gap between human language and communication in all other organisms. They consider language variation in the context of current biological approaches to species diversity - the 'evo-devo revolution' - which bring to light deep homologies between organisms. In dispensing with the classical notion of syntactic parameters, the authors argue that language variation, like biodiversity, is the result of experience and thus not a part of the language faculty in the narrow sense. They also examine the nature of this core language faculty, the primary categories with which it is concerned, the operations it performs, the syntactic constraints it poses on semantic interpretation and the role of phases in bridging the gap between brain and syntax. Written in language accessible to a wide audience, The Biolinguistic Enterprise will appeal to scholars and students of linguistics, cognitive science, biology, and natural language processing.

The conscious mind is life as we experience it; we see the world, feel our emotions and think our thoughts thanks to consciousness. This book provides an easy introduction to the foundations of consciousness; how can subjective consciousness be measured scientifically? What happens to the conscious mind and self when the brain gets injured? How does consciousness, our subjective self or soul, arise from the activities of the brain? Addressing the philosophical and historical roots of the problems alongside current scientific approaches to consciousness in psychology and neuroscience, Foundations of Consciousness examines key questions as well as delving deeper to look at altered and higher states of consciousness. Using student-friendly pedagogy throughout, the book discusses some of the most difficult to explain phenomena of consciousness, including dreaming, hypnosis, out-of-body experiences, and mystical experiences. Foundations of Consciousness provides an essential introduction to the scientific and philosophical approaches to consciousness for students in psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy. It will also appeal to those interested in the nature of the human soul, giving an insight into the motivation behind scientist's and philosopher's attempts to understand our place as conscious beings in the physical world.

Many metaphors go beyond pionting to the existing similarities between two objects -- they create the similarities. Such metaphors, which have been relegated to the back seat in most of the cognitive science research, are the focus of attention in this study, which addresses the creation of similarity within an elaborately laid out interactive framework of cognition. Starting from the constructivist views of Nelson Goodman and Jean Piaget, this framework resolves an apparent paradox in interactionism: how can reality not have a mind-independent ontology and structure, but still manage to constrain the possible worlds a cognitive agent can create in it? A comprehensive theory of metaphor is proposed in this framework that explains how metaphors can create similarities, and why such metaphors are an invaluable asset to cognition. The framework is then applied to related issues of analogical reasoning, induction, and computational modeling of creative metaphors.

This book surveys the entire field of learning and memory. It describes the major approaches to its study and looks at basic assumptions and philosophical underpinnings. Howard integrates work from quite different perspectives into a single framework, and describes peripheral areas not usually mentioned in mainstream books, such as prenatal learning, constraints on knowledge, nonconnectionist machine learning, intelligence and learning, and skills learning. He gives the reader a broad knowledge of what the field is all about, what its parts are and how they interrelate, its major principles and key applications. The primary contribution of this work is the integration of current thinking about learning with the literature and research on memory.

At the time of his death Hans Hormann, then Professor of Psy- chology at the Ruhr University, Bochum, West Germany, was pre- paring an English language version of his Eirifilhrung in die Psycholinguistik. The goal of this book, in both the German and English editions, was to present in compact and readily accessi- ble form the essentials of his approach to the psychology of lan- guage. Basing his work upon the materials treated at length and in depth in two previous comprehensive and more technical works, Psycholinguistics: An Introduction to Research and Theo- ry and To Mean-To Understand, Hormann had made a selection of themes and problems suitable for beginners and for those who wanted a convenient introduction to the specific framework with- in which Hormann thought psycholinguistics was to be pursued. The result is a remarkably clear, succinct, and provocative account of central issues and options of the psychology of lan- guage, that broad and not strictly delimited part of psychology that takes as its domain the multiform conditions, processes, and structures involved in the acqUisition, development, production, and grasp of linguistic meaning. Hormann's approach is admit- tedly contentious and goes directly against a great deal of Anglo- American psycholinguistics. In particular, it radically devalues the relevance of certain types of theoretical linguistics, prin- Cipally, though not exclusively, Chomskyan, for the psychology of vii viii PREFACE language.

The findings of split-brain research and the mind's symbolic processes are combined to examine the implications for understanding subjective experience of the religious and the sacred.

This is the first book-length work to integrate the insights of cognitive science fully into economics. It reviews a wide range of related work in both fields and proposes new approaches to choice theory, rationality, and interaction (equilibrium) that are consistent with the limited cognitive capacity of real human beings. While joining with neoclassical economics in supporting the validity of supply-and-demand theory where it is literally applicable, McCain challenges most neoclassical theory, especially monopoly, oligopoly, and general equilibrium theory and welfare economics. His work aims to further and unite recent notions of behavioral and social economics.

This important work will be of interest to behavioral, social, and Keynesian economists, as well as other social scientists and philosophers interested in economic phenomena.