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Books > Social sciences > Psychology > Cognition & cognitive psychology > Intelligence
Have you ever wondered why psychologists still can't agree on what intelligence is? Or felt dismayed by debates around individual differences? Criticising the pitfalls of IQ testing, this book explains the true nature of intelligent systems, and their evolution from cells to brains to culture and human minds. Understanding Intelligence debunks many of the myths and misunderstandings surrounding intelligence. It takes a new look at the nature of the environment and the development of 'talent' and achievement. This brings fresh and radical implications for promoting intelligence and creativity, and prompts readers to reconsider their own possibilities and aspirations. Providing a broad context to the subject, the author also unmasks the ideological distortions of intelligence in racism and eugenics, and the suppressed expectations across social classes and genders. This book is a must-read for anyone curious about our own intelligence.
TLC: Approach to Good Reasoning teaches critical thinking skills that students can then apply to potential solutions to societal problems. While many books on critical thinking, argumentation, and reasoning are text dense and focus on theory, TLC: Approach to Good Reasoning makes use of extensive real-world examples to teach students about various forms of reasoning and argumentation. Students will learn to recognize what constitutes an argument and will become familiar with the TLC (truth, logic, clarity) method of evaluating arguments. They will explore deductive, inductive, and syllogistic reasoning as well as enthymemes and fallacies. Each of the nine chapters features high-interest and challenging activities that allow for immediate application of the target skills. Contemporary in approach, accessible, and filled with engaging exercises, TLC: Approach to Good Reasoning is ideal for courses in introductory philosophy and logic. The widely applicable nature of the material also makes the book appropriate for courses in the law or English composition.
David Hume (1711-1776), philosopher, historian, and essayist, is widely considered to be Britain's greatest philosopher. One of the leading intellectual figures of the Scottish Enlightenment, his major works and central ideas, especially his radical empiricism and his critique of the pretensions of philosophical rationalism, remain hugely influential on contemporary philosophers. This comprehensive and accessible guide to Hume's life and work includes 21 specially commissioned essays, written by a team of leading experts, covering every aspect of Hume's thought. The Companion presents details of Hume's life, historical and philosophical context, providing students with a comprehensive overview of all the key themes and topics apparent in his work, including his accounts of causal reasoning, scepticism, the soul and the self, action, reason, free will, miracles, natural religion, politics, human nature, women, economics and history, and an account of his reception and enduring influence. This textbook is indispensable to anyone studying in the areas of Hume Studies, British, and eighteenth-century philosophy.
John D. Mayer, the renowned psychologist who co-developed the
groundbreaking theory of emotional intelligence, now draws on
decades of research to introduce another paradigm-shifting idea:
that in order to become our best selves, we use an even broader
intelligence--which he calls personal intelligence--to understand
our own personality and the personalities of the people around us.
The Importance of Being Rational systematically defends a novel reasons-based account of rationality. The book's central thesis is that what it is for one to be rational is to correctly respond to the normative reasons one possesses. Errol Lord defends novel views about what it is to possess reasons and what it is to correctly respond to reasons. He shows that these views not only help to support the book's main thesis, they also help to resolve several important problems that are independent of rationality. The account of possession provides novel contributions to debates about what determines what we ought to do, and the account of correctly responding to reasons provides novel contributions to debates about causal theories of reacting for reasons. After defending views about possession and correctly responding, Lord shows that the account of rationality can solve two difficult problems about rationality. The first is the New Evil Demon problem. The book argues that the account has the resources to show that internal duplicates necessarily have the same rational status. The second problem concerns the deontic significance of rationality. Recently it has been doubted whether we ought to be rational. The ultimate conclusion of the book is that the requirements of rationality are the requirements that we ultimately ought to comply with. If this is right, then rationality is of fundamental importance to our deliberative lives.
It is easy for us to believe that as a society we are getting smarter, at least as measured by IQ tests. This supposed improvement, the Flynn Effect, suggests that each generation is brighter than the last. If this improvement in intelligence is real we should all be much, much brighter than the Victorians. However, the researchers of this ground-breaking study find the reverse to be true- the Victorians were cleverer than us! IQ tests may be effective at picking out the brightest, but they are not reliable benchmarks of performance over more than a century. Historical Variance records the exploration of the Flyyn effect hypothesis, which included the use of high-quality instruments to measure simple reaction times (a recognised predictor of intelligence) in a meta-analytic study. The conclusions are very sobering: far from speeding up, we are slowing down. A decline in general intelligence (a loss equivalent to about 14 IQ points) since Victorian times may have resulted from the presence of dysgenic fertility. These findings, as detailed in Historical Variance, strongly indicate that the Victorians were substantially cleverer than we are today...
Unauthorised disclosures of classified intelligence are seen as doing significant damage to U.S. security. However, if intelligence is not made available to government officials who need it to do their jobs, enormous expenditures on collection, analysis, and dissemination are wasted. This book focuses on information acquired, analysed, and disseminated by agencies of the U.S. Intelligence Community. Better information sharing throughout the Federal Government and especially among the agencies of the Intelligence Community has become a priority for both the Executive Branch and Congress.
FT BUSINESS BOOK OF THE MONTH 'A comprehensive, concise, and practical guide that will enable anyone, in any situation, to develop their strategic thinking' Tiffani Bova, Chief Growth Evangelist, Salesforce, WSJ bestselling author, Growth IQ 'A must read for everyone who ever deals with complex important challenges. There are many take-away gems here that will help you push through the knotty centre of hard-to-resolve problems. Highly recommended!', Richard Rumelt, author of Good Strategy, Bad Strategy Being strategic is a critical skill. It enables you to solve problems on a day-to-day basis while also keeping an eye on the long term, anticipating opportunities and mitigating threats along the way. Fred Pelard has been teaching strategic thinking to executives at all levels at leading companies around the world for almost 20 years. How to Be Strategic is his accessible and thorough guide to strategic thinking in any situation. It contains 12 smartly illustrated, workable methodologies from leading experts like Eric Ries, Chan Kim, and Barbara Minto, and will help you find your own path to the right solution every time. 'A wonderful and inspirational look into wide-ranging frameworks and theories to spark new thinking and strategy' Tom Goodwin, author of Digital Darwinism and Head of Futures and Insight at Publicis Groupe 'Practical and comprehensive' Roeland Assenberg, Director, Strategy and Banking, Monitor Deloitte Netherlands
Straightening the Bell Curve offers a new way of looking at the distressingly persistent subject of intelligence research as it relates to race and gender. Constance Hilliard's premise - that researchers preoccupied with proving racial hierarchies often sacrifice scientific truth to masculine insecurities - rests on her examination of works of historical and contemporary figures in the field of racial research. Based on this thesis, Straightening the Bell Curve explores the emotional fixations concealed behind the presumably rational ones that propel otherwise clearheaded researchers to ignore elemental flaws in their conceptions as they set out to prove the cognitive inferiority of African Americans. The tendency to justify racial and cultural stereotypes on the grounds that they reflect underlying biological differences has a long and controversial history in America. As far back as the eighteenth century, new areas of scientific research employed craniology and craniometry in an attempt to"document" black inferiority. This scholarly preoccupation with measuring skull sizes emerged concomitant with two important developments: the solidifying of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the deep-seated fear among Europeans that Africans possessed larger sexual organs than they. Thus, craniologists came to the rescue of their anxious male patrons, insisting that the price Africa's "oversexed savages" paid for being well endowed was cognitive underdevelopment, confirmed through bogus skull measurement experiments. Constance Hilliard's compelling argument aims to change forever the way American society sees research purporting to identify racial differences in cognition and will alter irrevocably the way we view individuals who insist on believing such pseudo-scientific conclusions. This book detonates a debate that will weaken the last barriers standing between America's fractured racial past and its future promise.
The implications for philosophy and cognitive science of developments in statistical learning theory. In Reliable Reasoning, Gilbert Harman and Sanjeev Kulkarni-a philosopher and an engineer-argue that philosophy and cognitive science can benefit from statistical learning theory (SLT), the theory that lies behind recent advances in machine learning. The philosophical problem of induction, for example, is in part about the reliability of inductive reasoning, where the reliability of a method is measured by its statistically expected percentage of errors-a central topic in SLT. After discussing philosophical attempts to evade the problem of induction, Harman and Kulkarni provide an admirably clear account of the basic framework of SLT and its implications for inductive reasoning. They explain the Vapnik-Chervonenkis (VC) dimension of a set of hypotheses and distinguish two kinds of inductive reasoning. The authors discuss various topics in machine learning, including nearest-neighbor methods, neural networks, and support vector machines. Finally, they describe transductive reasoning and suggest possible new models of human reasoning suggested by developments in SLT.
Description This text features a novel, hands-on approach to the study of rhetorical devices. The student will become more engaged in the study of critical thinking by seeing its direct application to current events, student life, and decision-making. Bio K.D. "Douglas" Borcoman has been an adjunct and full-time professor of philosophy for over 20 years, during which time he has taught many critical thinking, logic, and introduction to philosophy courses. In addition, he is the Instructional Technology Consultant for the California State University Academic Technology Unit, in which role he trains faculty members in the use of various educational technologies. During his career, Mr. Borcoman has been a Deputy Probation Counselor as well as an alternative correctional education instructor specializing in technology as a mentor teacher. In these capacities, he created many critical thinking learning opportunities for participants in his courses, often conducted in conjunction with the NASA Educators program. He is also the producer-director of a video series entitled Critical Thinking Through Dialogue. Robin Alice Roth, Ph.D., is a full-time Instructor at CSUDH in the Philosophy Department and specializes in 19th and 20th Century Continental Philosophy, Philosophy of Religion, History of Philosophy, and Religious Studies. Dr. Roth has published numerous works and taught Critical Reasoning for the TVCSUDH program aired throughout the USA and regarded as one of the most popular education programs. Having traveled the world lecturing on her research, she is well-known for her significant contributions in contemporary Continental Philosophy and some of her work was re-published in Europe and Asia as the best in 20th Century Continental Philosophy. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy at DePaul University, Chicago, her B.A., M.A. and Certificate at CSULB, and she has received numerous grants.
Instinctual Intelligence is the first book that explores the evolution of human instincts. It offers uniquely modern approaches to align the passion and power of our instinctual heritage with the more enlightened possibilities of human life. Get to understand how of our basic instinctual systems- self-protection, social connection, resource gathering, playfulness and sexuality, and survival responses- function in everyday life. Learn how the full expression of instinctual intelligence becomes restricted by the time we reach adulthood. Drawing on leading-edge research in evolutionary neurobiology, clinical psychology, and spiritual development, explore how athletes (Tiger Woods), musicians (Madonna), business leaders (Oprah), and spiritual practitioners (Dalai Lama)- and learn how they achieved mastery in their chosen fields. Each person's instinctual intelligence simultaneously evolves the biological, social, cultural, and spiritual fabric of humanity.
Reasoning Skills for Handling Conflict is an easy to follow text in reasoning skills that centers on the problem of people disagreeing and trying to find ways to reach agreement. The first chapter covers how to tell what type of disagreement people have, and the remaining chapters center on each different type of disagreement: attitude, verbal, factual, conflicts of interest, and moral. This text is appropriate for a class in critical reasoning, logic, or peace studies for Grades 11 through College. It is in a workbook format with frequent exercises. Tests and powerpoint presentation software are available to instructors who use this book.
By exploring manifestations of normative and non-normative thinking in the geopolitical and cultural contexts of Early Modern Italy, Spain, and the American colonies, this volume hopes to encourage interdisciplinary discussions on the early modern notions of reason and unreason, good and evil, justice and injustice, center and periphery, freedom and containment, self and other. We still dream early modern dreams (Reason, the Subject, the Nation, the Modern World), and we are still haunted by the void at the center of it all.
By exploring manifestations of normative and non-normative thinking in the geopolitical and cultural contexts of Early Modern Italy, Spain, and the American colonies, this volume hopes to encourage interdisciplinary discussions on the early modern notions of reason and unreason, good and evil, justice and injustice, center and periphery, freedom and containment, self and other. We still dream early modern dreams (Reason, the Subject, the Nation, the Modern World), and we are still haunted by the void at the center of it all.
Historical and contemporary papers on the philosophical issues raised by the Turing Test as a criterion for intelligence. The Turing Test is part of the vocabulary of popular culture-it has appeared in works ranging from the Broadway play "Breaking the Code" to the comic strip "Robotman." The writings collected by Stuart Shieber for this book examine the profound philosophical issues surrounding the Turing Test as a criterion for intelligence. Alan Turing's idea, originally expressed in a 1950 paper titled "Computing Machinery and Intelligence" and published in the journal Mind, proposed an "indistinguishability test" that compared artifact and person. Following Descartes's dictum that it is the ability to speak that distinguishes human from beast, Turing proposed to test whether machine and person were indistinguishable in regard to verbal ability. He was not, as is often assumed, answering the question "Can machines think?" but proposing a more concrete way to ask it. Turing's proposed thought experiment encapsulates the issues that the writings in The Turing Test define and discuss. The first section of the book contains writings by philosophical precursors, including Descartes, who first proposed the idea of indistinguishablity tests. The second section contains all of Turing's writings on the Turing Test, including not only the Mind paper but also less familiar ephemeral material. The final section opens with responses to Turing's paper published in Mind soon after it first appeared. The bulk of this section, however, consists of papers from a broad spectrum of scholars in the field that directly address the issue of the Turing Test as a test for intelligence. Contributors John R. Searle, Ned Block, Daniel C. Dennett, and Noam Chomsky (in a previously unpublished paper). Each chapter is introduced by background material that can also be read as a self-contained essay on the Turing Test
This collection brings together a set of specially commissioned chapters from leading international researchers in the psychology of reasoning. Its purpose is to explore the historical, philosophical and theoretical implications of the development of this field. Taking the unusual approach of engaging not only with empirical data but also with the ideas and concepts underpinning the psychology of reasoning, this volume has important implications both for psychologists and other students of cognition, including philosophers. Sub-fields covered include mental logic, mental models, rational analysis, social judgement theory, game theory and evolutionary theory. There are also specific chapters dedicated to the history of syllogistic reasoning, the psychology of reasoning as it operates in scientific theory and practice, Brunswickian approaches to reasoning and task environments, and the implications of Popper's philosophy for models of behaviour testing. This cross-disciplinary dialogue and the range of material covered makes this an invaluable reference for students and researchers into the psychology and philosophy of reasoning.
In a complex and uncertain world, humans and animals make decisions under the constraints of limited knowledge, resources, and time. Yet models of rational decision making in economics, cognitive science, biology, and other fields largely ignore these real constraints and instead assume agents with perfect information and unlimited time. About forty years ago, Herbert Simon challenged this view with his notion of "bounded rationality." Today, bounded rationality has become a fashionable term used for disparate views of reasoning. This book promotes bounded rationality as the key to understanding how real people make decisions. Using the concept of an "adaptive toolbox," a repertoire of fast and frugal rules for decision making under uncertainty, it attempts to impose more order and coherence on the idea of bounded rationality. The contributors view bounded rationality neither as optimization under constraints nor as the study of people's reasoning fallacies. The strategies in the adaptive toolbox dispense with optimization and, for the most part, with calculations of probabilities and utilities. The book extends the concept of bounded rationality from cognitive tools to emotions; it analyzes social norms, imitation, and other cultural tools as rational strategies; and it shows how smart heuristics can exploit the structure of environments.
Analogy has been the focus of extensive research in cognitive science over the past two decades. Through analogy, novel situations and problems can be understood in terms of familiar ones. Indeed, a case can be made for analogical processing as the very core of cognition. This is the first book to span the full range of disciplines concerned with analogy. Its contributors represent cognitive, developmental, and comparative psychology; neuroscience; artificial intelligence; linguistics; and philosophy. The book is divided into three parts. The first part describes computational models of analogy as well as their relation to computational models of other cognitive processes. The second part addresses the role of analogy in a wide range of cognitive tasks, such as forming complex cognitive structures, conveying emotion, making decisions, and solving problems. The third part looks at the development of analogy in children and the possible use of analogy in nonhuman primates. Contributors: Miriam Bassok, Consuelo B. Boronat, Brian Bowdle, Fintan Costello, Kevin Dunbar, Gilles Fauconnier, Kenneth D. Forbus, Dedre Gentner, Usha Goswami, Brett Gray, Graeme S. Halford, Douglas Hofstadter, Keith J. Holyoak, John E. Hummel, Mark T. Keane, Boicho N. Kokinov, Arthur B. Markman, C. Page Moreau, David L. Oden, Alexander A. Petrov, Steven Phillips, David Premack, Cameron Shelley, Paul Thagard, Roger K.R. Thompson, William H. Wilson, Phillip Wolff.
Quickly acquire the knowledge and skills you need to confidently administer, score, and interpret the Kaufman assessment tests The seven Kaufman measures include the Kaufman Adolescent and Adult Intelligence Test (KAIT); Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children (K-ABC); Kaufman Brief Intelligence Test (K-BIT); Kaufman Functional Academic Skills Test (K-FAST); Kaufman Short Neuropsychological Assessment Procedure (K-SNAP); Early Screening Profiles (ESP); and Kaufman Survey of Early Academic and Language Skills (K-SEALS). In order to use them properly, professionals need authoritative advice and guidance on how to administer, score, and interpret these tests. Essentials of Cognitive Assessment with KAIT and Other Kaufman Measures is that source. Like all the volumes in the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series, this book is designed to help busy mental health practitioners quickly acquire the knowledge and skills they need to make optimal use of major psychological assessment instruments. Each concise chapter features numerous callout boxes highlighting key concepts, bulleted points, and extensive illustrative material, as well as test questions that help you gauge and reinforce your grasp of the information covered. Essentials of Cognitive Assessment with KAIT and Other Kaufman Measures includes vital information about each of the seven Kaufman tests, including information on how to integrate the measures and recommendations of related readings. In addition to step-by-step guidance on test administration, scoring, and interpretation, the authors provide their expert assessment of the tests’ relative strengths and weaknesses, valuable advice on their clinical applications, and several illuminating case reports. Other titles in the Essentials of Psychological Assessment series: Essentials of WAIS-III Assessment Essentials of Bayley Scales of Infant Development-II Assessment Essentials of WISC-III and WPPSI-R Assessment Essentials of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator® Assessment Essentials of Rorschach Assessment Essentials of Career Interest Assessment Essentials of Nonverbal Assessment Essentials of Cross-Battery Assessment
Goleman taught us the importance of Emotional Intelligence. Since the publication of his EQ 'exposition', a whole array of Emotional Intelligence books has appeared, with each title purporting to put those theories of EQ into practice. This book goes deeper. Revealing the structure beneath Emotional Intelligence, 7 Steps utilises its unique framework to combine EQ and Neuro Linguistic Programming (NLP) - the study of excellence that examines how behaviour is neurologically formulated. 7 Steps confidently integrates the insights of EQ and NLP to promote a greater understanding of how emotions work - and how they can be worked upon. This book is driven by one important message: 'don't just think about it, do it.' A model-based guide packed with powerful NLP exercises and self-assessment techniques, it allows you to generate your own trics, and to partake in an intensive EQ excellence course that utilises the self-programming practices of NLP. A thoroughly structured, functionally formatted guide to improving your EQ, 7 Steps serves as a textbook of EQ theory, a manual of NLP techniques, and a workbook that systematically leads you through the process of dynamic EQ improvement. It ans |
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