Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science
OUP Oxford (2008)
| Abstract | The development of cognitive science is one of the most remarkable and fascinating intellectual achievements of the modern era. The quest to understand the mind is as old as recorded human thought; but the progress of modern science has offered new methods and techniques which have revolutionized this enquiry. Oxford University Press now presents a masterful history of cognitive science, told by one of its most eminent practitioners. Cognitive science is the project of understanding the mind by modelling its workings. Psychology is its heart, but it draws together various adjoining fields of research, including artificial intelligence; neuroscientific study of the brain; philosophical investigation of mind, language, logic, and understanding; computational work on logic and reasoning; linguistic research on grammar, semantics, and communication; and anthropological explorations of human similarities and differences. Each discipline, in its own way, asks what the mind is, what it does, how it works, how it developed - how it is even possible. The key distinguishing characteristic of cognitive science, Boden suggests, compared with older ways of thinking about the mind, is the notion of understanding the mind as a kind of machine. She traces the origins of cognitive science back to Descartes's revolutionary ideas, and follows the story through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the pioneers of psychology and computing appear. Then she guides the reader through the complex interlinked paths along which the study of the mind developed in the twentieth century. Cognitive science, in Boden's broad conception, covers a wide range of aspects of mind: not just 'cognition' in the sense of knowledge or reasoning, but emotion, personality, social communication, and even action. In each area of investigation, Boden introduces the key ideas and the people who developed them. No one else could tell this story as Boden can: she has been an active participant in cognitive science since the 1960s, and has known many of the key figures personally. Her narrative is written in a lively, swift-moving style, enriched by the personal touch of someone who knows the story at first hand. Her history looks forward as well as back: it is her conviction that cognitive science today - and tomorrow - cannot be properly understood without a historical perspective. Mind as Machine will be a rich resource for anyone working on the mind, in any academic discipline, who wants to know how our understanding of our mental activities and capacities has developed. | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Buy the book | $65.49 new (23% off) $66.36 used (22% off) $80.75 direct from Amazon (5% off) Amazon page | |||||||||
| ISBN(s) | 9780199543168 019954316X | |||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,653 |
| External links |
  Try with proxy. |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesKeith Frankish & William Ramsey (eds.) (2012). The Cambridge Handbook of Cognitive Science. Cambridge University Press.
Vincent C. Müller (2008). Margaret A. Boden, Mind as Machine: A History of Cognitive Science , 2 Vols. Minds and Machines 18 (1).
Robert A. Wilson & Lucia Foglia (2011). Embodied Cognition. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Craig DeLancey (2001). Passionate Engines: What Emotions Reveal About the Mind and Artificial Intelligence. Oxford University Press.
Richard Samuels (2006). Is the Human Mind Massively Modular? In Rod Stainton (ed.), Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science. Blackwell.
Albert E. Lyngzeidetson (1990). Massively Parallel Distributed Processing and a Computationalist Foundation for Cognitive Science. British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 41 (March):121-127.
William Bechtel (2010). How Can Philosophy Be a True Cognitive Science Discipline? Topics in Cognitive Science 2 (3):357-366.
Martin Davies (2005). Cognitive Science. In Frank Jackson & Michael Smith (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press New York.
Analytics
Monthly downloads |
Added to index2012-01-31Total downloads7 ( #133,343 of 548,984 )Recent downloads (6 months)2 ( #37,320 of 548,984 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
