Introduction.--Biographical notes.--General analysis of knowledge and the act.--Perceptual and manipulatory phases of the act.--Cosmology.--Value and the act.--Supplementary essays.

The paper explores the distinction between two doctrines, both of which inform theory construction in much of modern cognitive psychology: the representational theory of mind and the computational theory of mind. According to the former, propositional attitudes are to be construed as relations that organisms bear to mental representations. According to the latter, mental processes have access only to formal (nonsemantic) properties of the mental representations over which they are defined.The following claims are defended: (1) That the traditional dispute between (...) “rational” and “naturalistic” psychology is plausibly viewed as an argument about the status of the computational theory of mind. Rational psychologists accept a formality condition on the specification of mental processes; naturalists do not. (2) That to accept the formality condition is to endorse a version of methodological solipsism. (3) That the acceptance of some such condition is warranted, at least for that part of psychology which concerns itself with theories of the mental causation of behavior. This is because: (4) such theories require nontransparent taxonomies of mental states; and (5) nontransparent taxonomies individuate mental states without reference to their semantic properties. Equivalently, (6) nontransparent taxonomies respect the way that the organism represents the object of its propositional attitudes toitself, and it is this representation which functions in the causation of behavior.The final section of the paper considers the prospect for a naturalistic psychology: one which defines its generalizations over relations between mental representations and their environmental causes, thus seeking to account for the semantic properties of propositional attitudes. Two related arguments are proposed, both leading to the conclusion that no such research strategy is likely to prove fruitful. (shrink)

In this book, which remained unfinished at his death, Husserl attempts to forge a union between phenomenology and existentialism.

Dewey on the reflex arc concept--an important theme in William James.

This first volume contains discussions of the brain, methods for analyzing behavior, thought, consciousness, attention, association, time, and memory.

"Crook has an extensive range of interests and writes with authority on the whole sociobiological spectrum. He discusses the behavior of insects, birds, primates, and so forth, with impressive thoroughness and detail. He... introduces an equally expert and apparently firsthand discussion of Eastern philosophy, especially Zen Buddhism. His purpose is to emphasize the duality, or perhaps multiplicity, of consciousness, and the importance of society's more objective facets. A scholarly work complete with excellent bibliographies, index, and references." --Choice.

Gathering information from both published and unpublished material and interviews with Gibson's family, colleagues, and friends, Reed (philosophy, Drexel U.) chronicles Gibson's life and intellectual development and his attempts to synthesize several contrasting intellectual traditions into what he ultimately called an "ecological approach" to psychology. Annotation(c) 2003 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com).

This volume tackles the slippery subject of 'meaning'.

Paul Ricoeur was one of the foremost interpreters and translators of Edmund Husserl's philosophy. These nine essays present Ricoeur's interpretation of the most important of Husserl's writings, with emphasis on his philosophy of consciousness rather than his work in logic. In Ricoeur's philosophy, phenomenology and existentialism came of age and these essays provide an introduction to the Husserlian elements which most heavily influenced his own philosophical position.

Foundations of Dialectical Psychology is a compilation of the writings of Klaus F. Riegel on dialectical psychology. The book presents chapters discussing such topics as the dialectics of human development; history of dialectical psychology; temporal organization of dialogues; and the analysis of the concept of crisis and its underlying philosophical model and ideology. Psychologists and students will find the book invaluable.

Following the thematic divisions of the first three volumes of Alfred Schutz's Collected Papers into The Problem of Social Reality, Studies in Social Theory and Phenomenological Philosophy, this fourth volume contains drafts of unfinished writings, drafts of published writings, translations of essays previously published in German, and some largely unpublished correspondence. The drafts of published writings contain important material omitted from the published versions, and the unfinished writings offer important insights into Schutz's otherwise unpublished ideas about economic and political theory (...) as well as the theory of law and the state. In addition, a large group contains Schutz's reflections on problems in phenomenological philosophy, including music, which both supplement and add new dimensions to his published thought. All together, the writings in this volume cover Schutz's last 15 years in Europe as well as manuscripts written after his arrival in the USA in 1939. Audience: Students and scholars of phenomenology, social theory and the human sciences in general. (shrink)

This is a study of all the recent literature on william james written from a phenomenological perspective with the purpose of showing that william james made fundamental contributions to the phenomenological theory of the intentionality of consciousness, To the phenomenological theory of self-Identity, And to the phenomenological conception of noetic freedom as the basic concept of ethical theory.

A survey of a wide range of social?scientific disciplines reveals a definite convergence of theoretical interest in human cognition and communication as situated, concerned, and embedded in social commitment. Recent contributions within situation semantics and cognitive science explicitly reject some of the constraints inherent in their shared philosophical heritage and prepare novel ground for dialogues between fields as far apart as formal semantics and ?dialogical? text theory. Issues such as purely cognitive versus motivational aspects of human situatedness, and the relationship (...) between models of individual information processing, on the one hand, and hermeneutic?dialectic assumptions about social and collective features of meaning and mind, on the other, are thus made topics of cross?disciplinary discussions. These are some of the many problems in need of further clarification if we want to explore the possibility of bridging and/or transcending the gulf between analytic?rationalist and hermeneutic?dialectic contributions to our insight into human cognition and communication. (shrink)

In this book, Hans Joas interweaves Mead's political and intellectual biography with the development of his theories.