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Good reasoning can lead to success; bad reasoning can lead to catastrophe. Yet, it's not obvious how we reason, and why we make mistakes. This book looks at the mental processes that underlie our reasoning. It provides the most accessible account yet of the science of reasoning.
Phil Johnson-Laird's theory of mental models has proved to be an influential development in the cognitive sciences. This theory aims to provide a detailed account of both reasoning and inference on the one hand, and language on the other. It can therefore be regarded as a step toward the much-sought-after unified theory of cognition.; This book provides an overview of mental models research. Some of the contributors were collaborators or former graduate students of Johnson-Laird, and between them they cover the main strands of mental models theory. After an appreciation of Johnson-Laird, the book covers topics including language Processing, Reasoning, Inference, The Role Of Emotions, And The Impact Of mental illnesses on thought processes.
In a field choked with seemingly impenetrable jargon, Philip N. Johnson-Laird has done the impossible: written a book about how the mind works that requires no advance knowledge of artificial intelligence, neurophysiology, or psychology. The mind, he says, depends on the brain in the same way as the execution of a program of symbolic instructions depends on a computer, and can thus be understood by anyone willing to start with basic principles of computation and follow his step-by-step explanations. The author begins with a brief account of the history of psychology and the birth of cognitive science after World War II. He then describes clearly and simply the nature of symbols and the theor...
This book offers a unified theory of the major propertries of mind, including comprehension, inference, and consciousness. The author argues that we apprehend the world by building inner mental replicas of the relationships among objects and events that concern us. The mind is essentially a model-building device that can itself be modeled on a computer. The book provides a blueprint for building such a model and numberous important illustrations of how to do it.
At the core of the "Psychology of Reasoning" is a vigorous discussion that incorporates various illustrations--some of them humorous, all of them fascinating--of the use of reason under a wide variety of different conditions. Particular emphasis is placed on the difficulties involved in dealing with negatively marked information that must be combined and used with other information for reaching conclusions. Thorough treatment is given as well to the search for plausible contexts that will render anomalous or ambiguous statements "sensible."
Good reasoning can lead to success; bad reasoning can lead to catastrophe. Yet, it's not obvious how we reason, and why we make mistakes - so much of our mental life goes on outside our awareness. In recent years huge strides have been made into developing a scientific understanding of reasoning. This new book by one of the pioneers of the field, Philip Johnson-Laird, looks at the mental processes that underlie our reasoning. It provides the most accessible account yet of the science of reasoning. We can all reason from our childhood onwards - but how? 'How we reason' outlines a bold approach to understanding reasoning. According to this approach, we don't rely on the laws of logic or probab...
This book is an exploration of human understanding, from the perspectives of psychology, philosophy, biology and theology. The six contributors are among the most internationally eminent in their fields. Though scholarly, the writing is non-technical. No background in psychology, philosophy or theology is presumed. No other interdisciplinary work has undertaken to explore the nature of human understanding. This book is unique, and highly significant for anyone interested in or concerned about the human condition.
In his only complete work of any length, Kenneth Craik considers thought as a term for the conscious working of a highly complex machine.
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.