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Artificial intelligence is on the point of taking humankind into a new age. The turning point will come when AI has advanced so far that it matches human intelligence in every way. Human intelligence, whilst slower in some respects, is still more flexible than AI. But, once AI has caught up, it will take no time at all before going on to surpass humans by a huge distance. That scary prospect is termed artificial superintelligence (ASI). Rupert Robson argues that we are now just two conceptual hurdles away from developing ASI. The first of the two hurdles is to embed consciousness in AI, thereby giving us the sentient robot. This will enable ASI to see the world through our eyes. The second of the two hurdles is about the developmental step needed in AI design so as to achieve human-level flexibility in thought. A new world is about to open up before us. We need to understand it and prepare for it.
Literature and neuroscience come together to illuminate the human experience of beauty, which unfolds in time. How does beauty exist in time? This is Gabrielle Starr’s central concern in Just in Time as she explores the experience of beauty not as an abstraction, but as the result of psychological and neurological processes in which time is central. Starr shows that aesthetic experience has temporal scale. Starr, a literary scholar and pioneer in the field and method of neuroaesthetics, which seeks the neurological basis of aesthetic experience, applies this methodology to the study of beauty in literature, considering such authors as Rita Dove, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Henry James, Toni Mor...
This book assesses whether belief in spirits is epistemically justified. It presents two arguments in support of the existence of spirits and arguments that experiences of various sorts (perceptions, mediumship, possession and animistic experiences) can lend justification to spirit-beliefs. Most work in philosophy of religion exclusively deals with the existence of God or the epistemic status of belief in God. Spirit beliefs are often regarded as aberrations, and the falsity of such beliefs is often assumed. This book argues that various beliefs concerning spirits can be regarded as justified when they are rooted in experiences that are not defeated. It argues that spirit-beliefs are not def...
Agency has two meanings in psychology and neuroscience. It can refer to one's capacity to affect the world and act in line with one's goals and desires--this is the objective aspect of agency. But agency can also refer to the subjective experience of controlling one's actions, or how it feels to achieve one's goals or affect the world. This subjective aspect is known as the sense of agency, and it is an important part of what makes us human. Interest in the sense of agency has exploded since the early 2000s, largely because scientists have learned that it can be studied objectively through analyses of human judgment, behavior, and the brain. This book brings together some of the world's lead...
Could we understand, in biological terms, the unique and fantastic capabilities of the human brain to both create and enjoy art? In the past decade neuroscience has made a huge leap in developing experimental techniques as well as theoretical frameworks for studying emergent properties following the activity of large neuronal networks. These methods, including MEG, fMRI, sophisticated data analysis approaches and behavioral methods, are increasingly being used in many labs worldwide, with the goal to explore brain mechanisms corresponding to the artistic experience. The 37 articles composing this unique Frontiers Research Topic bring together experimental and theoretical research, linking st...
Background: Interacting with other people involves spatial awareness of one’s own body and the other’s body and viewpoint. In the past, social cognition has focused largely on belief reasoning, which is abstracted away from spatial and bodily representations, while there is a strong tradition of work on spatial and object representation which does not consider social interactions. These two domains have flourished independently. A small but growing body of research examines how awareness of space and body relates to the ability to interpret and interact with others. This also builds on the growing awareness that many cognitive processes are embodied, which could be of relevance for the i...
As the latest biannual meeting of the German Society for Cognitive Science (Gesellschaft für Kognitionswissenschaft, GK), KogWis 2010 at Potsdam University reflects the current trends in a fascinating domain of research concerned with human and artificial cognition and the interaction of mind and brain. The Plenary talks provide a venue for questions of the numerical capacities and human arithmetic (Brian Butterworth), of the theoretical development of cognitive architectures and intelligent virtual agents (Pat Langley), of categorizations induced by linguistic constructions (Claudia Maienborn), and of a cross-level account of the “Self as a complex system“ (Paul Thagard). KogWis 2010 i...
This volume concerns the longstanding intellectual puzzle of how individuals overcome their biological, neural, and mental finitude to achieve sociality. It explores how humans take each other into account, coordinate their actions, and are able to share their inner states and to communicate. Sophisticated views on the bases of sociality are detailed at the level of neural mechanisms, perception and memory, motivation, communication and dialog, culture, and evolution. These insights have been inspired by major strides and exciting new developments in disciplines as far afield as ethology, evolutionary ecology, neuroscience, cognition, memory, developmental and social psychology, psycholinguistics, philosophy, robotics, and sociology. The volume is the first to bridge these disciplinary boundaries to lay the foundations for an integrated and general conceptualization of the bases of sociality and its implications for psychology. Each contribution presents different levels of the grounding of sociality and will further stimulate novel approaches to linking different layers of sociality, from the neural to the cultural level.
In the last 10-15 years, the "embodied" and "grounded" cognition approach has become widespread in all fields related to cognitive science, such as cognitive and social psychology, neuroscience, philosophy, anthropology, computational modelling and robotics. According to this approach, our cognitive activity is grounded in sensory-motor processes and situated in specific contexts and situations. Therefore, in this view, concepts consist of the reactivation of the same neural pattern that is present when we perceive and/or interact with the objects they refer to. In the same way, understanding language would imply forming a mental simulation of what is linguistically described. This simulatio...
The first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. This landmark work is the first systematic collaboration between cognitive scientists and sports psychologists that considers the mind–body relationship from the perspective of athletic skill and sports practice. With twenty-six chapters by leading researchers, the book connects and integrates findings from fields that range from philosophy of mind to sociology of sports. The chapters show not only that sports can tell scientists how the human mind works but also that the scientific study of the human min...