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Showing 1 - 25 of 26 matches in All Departments
The book Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery, aims to explain how specific modeling practices employed by scientists are productive methods of creative changes in science. The study of diagnostic, visual, spatial, analogical, and temporal reasoning has demonstrated that there are many ways of performing intelligent and creative reasoning which cannot be described by classical logic alone. The study of these high-level methods of reasoning is situated at the crossroads of philosophy, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and logic: at the heart of cognitive science. Model based reasoning promotes conceptual change because it is effective in abstracting, generating, and integrating constraints in ways that produce novel results. There are several key ingredients common to the various forms of model-based reasoning to be considered in this presentation. The models are intended as interpretations of target physical systems, processes, phenomena, or situations. The models are retrieved or constructed on the basis of potentially satisfying salient constraints of the target domain.In the modeling process, various forms of abstraction, such as limiting case, idealization, generalization, and generic modeling are utilized. Evaluation and adaptation take place in the light of structural of structural, causal, and/or functional constraint satisfaction and enhanced understanding of the target problem is obtained through the modeling process. Simulation can be used to produce new states and enable evaluation of behaviors, constraint satisfaction, and other factors. The book also addresses some of the main aspects of the concept of abduction, connecting it to the central epistemological question of hypothesis withdrawal in science and model-based reasoning, where abductive interferences exhibit their most appealing cognitive virtues. The most recent results and achievements in the above areas are illustrated in detail by the various contributors to the work, who are among the most respected researchers in philosophy, artificial intelligence and cognitive science.
Living is a balancing act. Ordinary activities like walking, running, or riding a bike require the brain to keep the body in balance. A dancer's poised elegance and a tightrope walker's breathtaking performance are feats of balance. Language abounds with expressions and figures of speech that invoke balance. People fret over work-life balance or try to eat a balanced diet. The concept crops up from politics-checks and balances, the balance of power, balanced budgets-to science, in which ideas of equilibrium are crucial. Why is balance so fundamental, and how do physical and metaphorical balance shed light on each other? Paul Thagard explores the physiological workings and metaphorical resonance of balance in the brain, the body, and society. He describes the neural mechanisms that keep bodies balanced and explains why their failures can result in nausea, falls, or vertigo. Thagard connects bodily balance with leading ideas in neuroscience, including the nature of consciousness. He analyzes balance metaphors across science, medicine, economics, the arts, and philosophy, showing why some aid understanding but others are misleading or harmful. Thagard contends that balance is ultimately a matter of making sense of the world. In both literal and metaphorical senses, balance is what enables people to solve the puzzles of life by turning sensory signals or an incongruous comparison into a coherent whole. Bridging philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience, Balance shows how an unheralded concept's many meanings illuminate the human condition.
The book Model-Based Reasoning in Scientific Discovery, aims to explain how specific modeling practices employed by scientists are productive methods of creative changes in science. The study of diagnostic, visual, spatial, analogical, and temporal reasoning has demonstrated that there are many ways of performing intelligent and creative reasoning which cannot be described by classical logic alone. The study of these high-level methods of reasoning is situated at the crossroads of philosophy, artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, and logic: at the heart of cognitive science. Model based reasoning promotes conceptual change because it is effective in abstracting, generating, and integrating constraints in ways that produce novel results. There are several key ingredients common to the various forms of model-based reasoning to be considered in this presentation. The models are intended as interpretations of target physical systems, processes, phenomena, or situations. The models are retrieved or constructed on the basis of potentially satisfying salient constraints of the target domain. In the modeling process, various forms of abstraction, such as limiting case, idealization, generalization, and generic modeling are utilized. Evaluation and adaptation take place in the light of structural of structural, causal, and/or functional constraint satisfaction and enhanced understanding of the target problem is obtained through the modeling process. Simulation can be used to produce new states and enable evaluation of behaviors, constraint satisfaction, and other factors. The book also addresses some of the main aspects of the concept of abduction, connecting it to the centralepistemological question of hypothesis withdrawal in science and model-based reasoning, where abductive interferences exhibit their most appealing cognitive virtues. The most recent results and achievements in the above areas are illustrated in detail by the various contributors to the work, who are among the most respected researchers in philosophy, artificial intelligence and cognitive science.
How do minds make societies, and how do societies change? Paul Thagard systematically connects neural and psychological explanations of mind with major social sciences (social psychology, sociology, politics, economics, anthropology, and history) and professions (medicine, law, education, engineering, and business). Social change emerges from interacting social and mental mechanisms. Many economists and political scientists assume that individuals make rational choices, despite the abundance of evidence that people frequently succumb to thinking errors such as motivated inference. Much of sociology and anthropology is taken over with postmodernist assumptions that everything is constructed on the basis of social relations such as power, with no inkling that these relations are mediated by how people think about each other. Mind-Society displays the interdependence of the cognitive and social sciences by describing the interconnections among mental and social mechanisms, which interact to generate social changes ranging from marriage patterns to wars. Validation comes from detailed studies of important social changes, from norms about romantic relationships to economic practices, political institutions, religious customs, and international relations. This book belongs to a trio that includes Brain-Mind: From Neurons to Consciousness and Creativity and Natural Philosophy: From Social Brains to Knowledge, Reality, Morality, and Beauty. They can be read independently, but together they make up a Treatise on Mind and Society that provides a unified and comprehensive treatment of the cognitive sciences, social sciences, professions, and humanities.
"Philosophy of Linguistics" investigates the foundational concepts and methods of linguistics, the scientific study of human language. This groundbreaking collection, the most thorough treatment of the philosophy of linguistics ever published, brings together philosophers, scientists and historians to map out both the foundational assumptions set during the second half of the last century and the unfolding shifts in perspective in which more functionalist perspectives are explored. The opening chapter lays out the philosophical background in preparation for the papers that follow, which demonstrate the shift in the perspective of linguistics study through discussions of syntax, semantics, phonology and cognitive science more generally. The volume serves as a detailed introduction for those new to the field as well as a rich source of new insights and potential research agendas for those already engaged with the philosophy of linguistics. Part of the Handbook of the Philosophy of Science series edited by: Dov M. Gabbay, King's College, London, UK; Paul Thagard,
University of Waterloo, Canada; and John Woods, University of
British Columbia, Canada.
This volume covers a wide range of conceptual, epistemological and methodological issues in the philosophy of science raised by reflection upon medical science and practice. Several chapters examine such general meta-scientific concepts as discovery, reduction, theories and models, causal inference and scientific realism as they apply to medicine or medical science in particular. Some discuss important concepts specific to medicine (diagnosis, health, disease, brain death). A topic such as evidence, for instance, is examined at a variety of levels, from social mechanisms for guiding evidence-based reasoning such as evidence-based medicine, consensus conferences, and clinical trials, to the more abstract analysis of experimentation, inference and uncertainty. Some chapters reflect on particular domains of medicine, including psychiatry, public health, and nursing. The contributions span a broad range of detailed cases from the
science and practice of medicine, as well as a broad range of
intellectual approaches, from conceptual analysis to detailed
examinations of particular scientific papers or historical
episodes.
The most pressing problems facing humanity today - over-population,
energy shortages, climate change, soil erosion, species
extinctions, the risk of epidemic disease, the threat of warfare
that could destroy all the hard-won gains of civilization, and even
the recent fibrillations of the stock market - are all ecological
or have a large ecological component. in this volume philosophers
turn their attention to understanding the science of ecology and
its huge implications for the human project.
One of the most striking features of mathematics is the fact that
we are much more certain about the mathematical knowledge we have
than about what mathematical knowledge is knowledge of. Are
numbers, sets, functions and groups physical entities of some kind?
Are they objectively existing objects in some non-physical,
mathematical realm? Are they ideas that are present only in the
mind? Or do mathematical truths not involve referents of any kind?
Information is a recognized fundamental notion across the sciences
and humanities, which is crucial to understanding physical
computation, communication, and human cognition. The Philosophy of
Information brings together the most important perspectives on
information. It includes major technical approaches, while also
setting out the historical backgrounds of information as well as
its contemporary role in many academic fields. Also, special
unifying topics are high-lighted that play across many fields,
while we also aim at identifying relevant themes for philosophical
reflection. There is no established area yet of Philosophy of
Information, and this Handbook can help shape one, making sure it
is well grounded in scientific expertise. As a side benefit, a book
like this can facilitate contacts and collaboration among diverse
academic milieus sharing a common interest in information.
This volume concerns philosophical issues that arise from the
practice of anthropology and sociology. The essays cover a wide
range of issues, including traditional questions in the philosophy
of social science as well as those specific to these disciplines.
Authors attend to the historical development of the current debates
and set the stage for future work.
How do brains make minds? Paul Thagard presents a unified, brain-based theory of cognition and emotion with applications to the most complex kinds of thinking, right up to consciousness and creativity. Neural mechanisms are used to explain mental operations for analogy, action, intention, language, and the self. Brain-Mind develops a brilliant account of mental operations using promising new ideas from theoretical neuroscience. Single neurons cannot do much by themselves, but groups of neurons work together to accomplish powerful kinds of mental representation, including concepts, images, and rules. Minds enable people to perceive, imagine, solve problems, understand, learn, speak, reason, create, and be emotional and conscious. Competing explanations of how the mind works have identified it as soul, computer, brain, dynamical system, or social construction. This book explains minds in terms of interacting mechanisms operating at multiple levels, including the social, mental, neural, and molecular. Unification comes from systematic application of Chris Eliasmith's powerful Semantic Pointer Architecture, a highly original synthesis of neural network and symbolic ideas about how the mind works. This book belongs to a trio that includes Mind-Society: From Brains to Social Sciences and Professions and Natural Philosophy: From Social Brains to Knowledge, Reality, Morality, and Beauty. They can be read independently, but together they make up a Treatise on Mind and Society that provides a unified and comprehensive treatment of the cognitive sciences, social sciences, professions, and humanities.
Part of the Handbook of the Philosophy of Science Series edited by: Dov M. Gabbay King's College, London, UK; Paul Thagard University of Waterloo, Canada; and John Woods University of British Columbia, Canada. "Philosophy of Economics" investigates the foundational concepts
and methods of economics, the social science that analyzes the
production, distribution and consumption of goods and services.
This groundbreaking collection, the most thorough treatment of the
philosophy of economics ever published, brings together
philosophers, scientists and historians to map out the central
topics in the field. The articles are divided into two groups.
Chapters in the first group deal with various philosophical issues
characteristic of economics in general, including realism and
Lakatos, explanation and testing, modeling and mathematics,
political ideology and feminist epistemology. Chapters in the
second group discuss particular methods, theories and branches of
economics, including forecasting and measurement, econometrics and
experimentation, rational choice and agency issues, game theory and
social choice, behavioral economics and public choice, geographical
economics and evolutionary economics, and finally the economics of
scientific knowledge. This volume serves as a detailed introduction
for those new to the field as well as a rich source of new insights
and potential research agendas for those already engaged with the
philosophy of economics.
Why is life worth living? What makes actions right or wrong? What is reality and how do we know it? "The Brain and the Meaning of Life" draws on research in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to answer some of the most pressing questions about life's nature and value. Paul Thagard argues that evidence requires the abandonment of many traditional ideas about the soul, free will, and immortality, and shows how brain science matters for fundamental issues about reality, morality, and the meaning of life. The ongoing Brain Revolution reveals how love, work, and play provide good reasons for living. Defending the superiority of evidence-based reasoning over religious faith and philosophical thought experiments, Thagard argues that minds are brains and that reality is what science can discover. Brains come to know reality through a combination of perception and reasoning. Just as important, our brains evaluate aspects of reality through emotions that can produce both good and bad decisions. Our cognitive and emotional abilities allow us to understand reality, decide effectively, act morally, and pursue the vital needs of love, work, and play. Wisdom consists of knowing what matters, why it matters, and how to achieve it. "The Brain and the Meaning of Life" shows how brain science helps to answer questions about the nature of mind and reality, while alleviating anxiety about the difficulty of life in a vast universe. The book integrates decades of multidisciplinary research, but its clear explanations and humor make it accessible to the general reader.
How do scientists develop new explanations of disease? How do those explanations become accepted as true? And how does medical diagnosis change when physicians are confronted with new scientific evidence? These are some of the questions that Paul Thagard pursues in this pathbreaking book that develops a new, integrative approach to the study of science. Ranging through the history of medicine, from the Hippocratic theory of humors to modern explanations of Mad Cow Disease and chronic fatigue syndrome, Thagard analyzes the development and acceptance of scientific ideas. At the heart of the book is a case study of the recent dramatic shift in medical understanding of peptic ulcers, most of which are now believed to be caused by infection by the bacterium "Helicobacter pylori." When this explanation was first proposed in 1983, it was greeted with intense skepticism by most medical experts, but it became widely accepted over the next decade. Thagard discusses the psychological processes of discovery and acceptance, the physical processes involving instruments and experiments, and the social processes of collaboration, communication, and consensus that brought about this transformation in medical knowledge. "How Scientists Explain Disease" challenges both traditional philosophy of science, which has viewed science as largely a matter of logic, and contemporary science studies that view science as largely a matter of power. Drawing on theories of distributed computing and artificial intelligence, Paul Thagard develops new models that make sense of scientific change as a complex system of cognitive, social, and physical interactions. This is a book that will appeal to all readers with an interest in the development of science and medicine. It combines an engaging style, significant research, and a powerfully original argument.
In this path-breaking work, Paul Thagard draws on the history and philosophy of science, cognitive psychology, and the field of artificial intelligence to develop a theory of conceptual change capable of accounting for all major scientific revolutions. The history of science contains dramatic episodes of revolutionary change in which whole systems of concepts have been replaced by new systems. Thagard provides a new and comprehensive perspective on the transformation of scientific conceptual systems. Thagard examines the Copernican and the Darwinian revolutions and the emergence of Newton's mechanics, Lavoisier's oxygen theory, Einstein's theory of relativity, quantum theory, and the geological theory of plate tectonics. He discusses the psychological mechanisms by which new concepts and links between them are formed, and advances a computational theory of explanatory coherence to show how new theories can be judged to be superior to previous ones.
"Philosophy of Chemistry" investigates the foundational concepts
and methods of chemistry, the science of the nature of substances
and their transformations. This groundbreaking collection, the most
thorough treatment of the philosophy of chemistry ever published,
brings together philosophers, scientists and historians to map out
the central topics in the field. The 33 articles address the
history of the philosophy of chemistry and the philosophical
importance of some central figures in the history of chemistry; the
nature of chemical substances; central chemical concepts and
methods, including the chemical bond, the periodic table and
reaction mechanisms; and chemistry s relationship to other
disciplines such as physics, molecular biology, pharmacy and
chemical engineering. This volume serves as a detailed introduction
for those new to the field as well as a rich source of new insights
and potential research agendas for those already engaged with the
philosophy of chemistry.
A cognitive science perspective on scientific development, drawing on philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and computational modeling. Many disciplines, including philosophy, history, and sociology, have attempted to make sense of how science works. In this book, Paul Thagard examines scientific development from the interdisciplinary perspective of cognitive science. Cognitive science combines insights from researchers in many fields: philosophers analyze historical cases, psychologists carry out behavioral experiments, neuroscientists perform brain scans, and computer modelers write programs that simulate thought processes. Thagard develops cognitive perspectives on the nature of explanation, mental models, theory choice, and resistance to scientific change, considering disbelief in climate change as a case study. He presents a series of studies that describe the psychological and neural processes that have led to breakthroughs in science, medicine, and technology. He shows how discoveries of new theories and explanations lead to conceptual change, with examples from biology, psychology, and medicine. Finally, he shows how the cognitive science of science can integrate descriptive and normative concerns; and he considers the neural underpinnings of certain scientific concepts.
The domain of nonlinear dynamical systems and its mathematical
underpinnings has been developing exponentially for a century, the
last 35 years seeing an outpouring of new ideas and applications
and a concomitant confluence with ideas of complex systems and
their applications from irreversible thermodynamics. A few examples
are in meteorology, ecological dynamics, andsocial and economic
dynamics. These new ideas have profound implications for our
understanding and practice in domains involving complexity,
predictability and determinism, equilibrium, control, planning,
individuality, responsibility and so on. -Comprehensive coverage of all main theories in the philosophy of Complex Systems -Clearly written expositions of fundamental ideas and concepts -Definitive discussions by leading researchers in the field -Summaries of leading-edge research in related fields are also included"
Psychology is the study of thinking, and cognitive science is the
interdisciplinary investigation of mind and intelligence that also
includes philosophy, artificial intelligence, neuroscience,
linguistics, and anthropology. In these investigations, many
philosophical issues arise concerning methods and central concepts.
"Mind Readings" is a collection of accessible readings on some of the most important topics in cognitive science. Although anyone interested in the interdisciplinary study of mind will find the selections well worth reading, they work particularly well with Paul Thagard's textbook "Mind: An Introduction Cognitive Science," and provide further discussion on the major topics discussed in that book. The first eight chapters present approaches to cognitive science from the perspective that thinking consists of computational procedures on mental representations. The remaining five chapters discuss challenges to the computational-representational understanding of mind. Contributors: John R. Anderson, Ruth M.J. Byrne, E.H. Durfee, Chris Eliasmith, Owen Flanagan, Dedre Gentner, Janice Glasgow, Philip N. Johnson-Laird, Alan Mackworth, Arthur B. Markman, Douglas L. Medin, Keith Oatley, Dimitri Papadias, Steven Pinker, David E. Rumelhart, Herbert A. Simon.
Analogy -- recalling familiar past situations to deal with novel ones -- is a mental tool that everyone uses. Analogy can provide invaluable creative insights, but it can also lead to dangerous errors. In "Mental Leaps" two leading cognitive scientists show how analogy works and how it can be used most effectively. Keith Holyoak and Paul Thagard provide a unified, comprehensive account of the diverse operations and applications of analogy, including problem solving, decision making, explanation, and communication. Holyoak and Thagard present their own theory of analogy, considering its implications for cognitive science in general, and survey examples from many other domains. These include animal cognition, developmental and social psychology, political science, philosophy, history of science, anthropology, and literature. Understanding how we draw analogies is important for people interested in the evolution of thinking in animals and in children; for those whose focus is on either creative thinking or errors of everyday reasoning; for those concerned with how decisions are made in law, business, and politics; and for those striving to improve education. "Mental Leaps" covers all of this ground, emphasizing the principles that govern the use of analogy and keeping technical matters to a minimum. "A Bradford Book"
Scientists use concepts and principles that are partly specific for
their subject matter, but they also share part of them with
colleagues working in different fields. Compare the biological
notion of a 'natural kind' with the general notion of
'confirmation' of a hypothesis by certain evidence. Or compare the
physical principle of the 'conservation of energy' and the general
principle of 'the unity of science'. Scientists agree that all such
notions and principles aren't as crystal clear as one might wish.
Philosophy of Biology is a rapidly expanding field. It is concerned
with explanatory concepts in evolution, genetics, and ecology. This
collection of 25 essays by leading researchers provides an overview
of the state of the field. These essays are wholly new; none of
them could have been written even ten years ago. They demonstrate
how philosophical analysis has been able to contribute to sometimes
contested areas of scientific theory making. |
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