Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
The Tool Instinct
Humans use countless tools and are constantly creating new ones. We are so prone to materiality that the changes we implement in our environment could put our very survival at stake. It has therefore become necessary to question the cognitive origins of this materiality. The Tool Instinct examines this subject by diametrically setting aside the idea that tool use is limited to manual activity. It proposes an original perspective that surpasses a great number of false beliefs regarding the relationship between humans and tools. The author argues that the human tendency to create and use tools relies on our ability (one that may be unique to our species) to generate our own physical problems, thereby resulting in a reasoning that is directed towards our physical world.
The cognitive and neural bases of human tool use
Humans are not unique in using tools. But human tool use differs from that known to occur in nonhumans in being very frequent, spontaneous, and diversified. So a fundamental issue is, what are the cognitive and neural bases of human tool use? This Research Topic of Frontiers provides a venue for leading researchers in the field of tool use to present original research papers, integrative reviews or theoretical articles that further our understanding of this topic. Articles address a wide range of issues including, for instance, the nature of the underlying representations (e.g., conceptual, sensorimotor), the mechanisms supporting the incorporation of tools into body schema, the link between imitation and tool use, or the evolutionary origins of human tool use. Articles are included from experimental psychology, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, neurophysiology, developmental psychology, ethology, comparative psychology, and ergonomics. The goal of this Research Topic of Frontiers is to provide a state-of-the-art view of the field.
Biopolitical Animal
The two issues around which this collection revolves are that it is impossible to address biopolitics without taking the animal question into account, and that the animal question inherently concerns the politics of life beyond species barriers. Although biopolitical theories are necessarily structured around animal metaphors, they predominantly refer to human corporeality. On the other hand, the animal question is typically treated as an ethical issue, that is, a question of how human beings, the dominant species, ought to learn how to live peaceably with and respect other forms of life. This collection of essays by leading scholars in the fields of biopolitics and animal studies problematises, reconceptualises, and redefines these categories in order to realise the full potential of the biopolitical framework of analysis in the context of animal studies and praxis.
Mind in Nature
A dialogue between contemporary neuroscience and John Dewey’s seminal philosophical work Experience and Nature, exploring how the bodily roots of human meaning, selfhood, and values provide wisdom for living. The intersection of cognitive science and pragmatist philosophy reveals the bodily basis of human meaning, thought, selfhood, and values. John Dewey's revolutionary account of pragmatist philosophy Experience and Nature (1925) explores humans as complex social animals, developing through ongoing engagement with their physical, interpersonal, and cultural environments. Drawing on recent research in biology and neuroscience that supports, extends, and, on occasion, reformulates some of Dewey's seminal insights, embodied cognition expert Mark L. Johnson and behavioral neuroscientist Jay Schulkin develop the most expansive intertwining of Dewey's philosophy with biology and neuroscience to date. The result is a positive, life-affirming understanding of how our evolutionary and individual development shapes who we are, what we can know, where our deepest values come from, and how we can cultivate wisdom for a meaningful and intelligent life.
Anger
Tracing the story of anger from the Buddha to Twitter, Rosenwein provides a much-needed account of our changing and contradictory understandings of this emotion All of us think we know when we are angry, and we are sure we can recognize anger in others as well. But this is only superficially true. We see anger through lenses colored by what we know, experience, and learn. Barbara H. Rosenwein traces our many conflicting ideas about and expressions of anger, taking the story from the Buddha to our own time, from anger’s complete rejection to its warm reception. Rosenwein explores how anger has been characterized by gender and race, why it has been tied to violence and how that is often a false connection, how it has figured among the seven deadly sins and yet is considered a virtue, and how its interpretation, once largely the preserve of philosophers and theologians, has been gradually handed over to scientists—with very mixed results. Rosenwein shows that the history of anger can help us grapple with it today.
Disruption of Habits During the Pandemic
In the year 2020, what we used to think that our habits have been profoundly disrupted. Lockdown still represents an unprecedented experience for all of those who went through it since it radically affected our freedom of movement and social interaction, that used to make up our everyday lives. Some people believe that once the pandemic ends, nothing will be the same. Others think that once the virus becomes weaker or a vaccine is at our disposal and the fear is diminished, everything will go back to normal because the mechanism of habit is in many ways similar to the mechanisms of nature, reiterating the uniformity of its functioning. Who is right then? Both positions, perhaps. When philosophers addressed the issue of customs, namely collective habits, generally emphasized the caution required when it comes to changing them and if we look back on history... Could pandemics affect shared habits in specific territories as ultimately generated in reaction to other natural risks and/or to their threats?
Neural Mechanisms
This volume brings together new papers advancing contemporary debates in foundational, conceptual, and methodological issues in cognitive neuroscience. The different perspectives presented in each chapter have previously been discussed between the authors, as the volume builds on the experience of Neural Mechanisms (NM) Online – webinar series on the philosophy of neuroscience organized by the editors of this volume. The contributed chapters pertain to five core areas in current philosophy of neuroscience. It surveys the novel forms of explanation (and prediction) developed in cognitive neuroscience, and looks at new concepts, methods and techniques used in the field. The book also highlights the metaphysical challenges raised by recent neuroscience and demonstrates the relation between neuroscience and mechanistic philosophy. Finally, the book dives into the issue of neural computations and representations. Assembling contributions from leading philosophers of neuroscience, this work draws upon the expertise of both established scholars and promising early career researchers.
Emotions, Metacognition, and the Intuition of Language Normativity
This book proposes a comprehensive discussion of the issue of linguistic feeling, the subject’s metalinguistic capacity to intuitively apprehend the normative – lexical, syntactic, morphological, phonological... – dimensions of a definite language he or she is acquainted with. The volume’s twelve contributions aim to revisit a concept that, through a fluctuating terminology (“Sprachgefühl,” “sentiment de la langue,” “linguistic intuitions,” etc.), had developed, since the late 18th century, within a variety of cultural contexts and research traditions, and whose theoretical, epistemological, and historical ins and outs had not been systematically explored so far. Beginning with a long opening chapter, the book consists of two parts, one tracing the multifaceted approaches to linguistic feeling from Herder to Wittgenstein, and one offering a representative overview of the debates about the issue at stake in current linguistics and philosophy, while addressing the question of the place of metacognition, normativity, and affectivity in language processes.
The Freedom of Words
The Freedom of Words is for anyone interested in understanding the role of body and language in cognition and how humans developed the sophisticated ability to use abstract concepts like 'freedom' and 'thinking'. This volume adopts a transdisciplinary perspective, including philosophy, semiotics, psychology, and neuroscience, to show how language, as a tool, shapes our minds and influences our interaction with the physical and social environment. It develops a theory showing how abstract concepts in their different varieties enhance cognition and profoundly influence our social and affective life. It addresses how children learn such abstract concepts, details how they vary across languages and cultures, and outlines the link between abstractness and the capability to detect inner bodily signals. Overall, the book shows how words – abstract words in particular, because of their indeterminate and open character – grant us freedom.
Mirroring Brains
Mirroring Brains provides a new interpretation of the property and function of mirror neurons, allowing readers an insight into a fundamental principle of brain function. Rizzolatti and Sinigaglia examine the main neuronal and psychological findings concerning the mirror mechanism, and its potential role in social cognition.
