The Mind
The Mind

Author: E. Bruce Goldstein

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 247

ISBN-13: 0262358778

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An accessible and engaging account of the mind and its connection to the brain. The mind encompasses everything we experience, and these experiences are created by the brain--often without our awareness. Experience is private; we can't know the minds of others. But we also don't know what is happening in our own minds. In this book, E. Bruce Goldstein offers an accessible and engaging account of the mind and its connection to the brain. He takes as his starting point two central questions--what is the mind? and what is consciousness?--and leads readers through topics that range from conceptions of the mind in popular culture to the wiring system of the brain. Throughout, he draws on the latest research, explaining its significance and relevance.

The Mind's Eye
The Mind's Eye

Author: Oliver Sacks

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2010-10-26

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0307594556

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • From “the poet laureate of medicine" (The New York Times) and the author of the classic The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat comes a fascinating exploration of the remarkable, unpredictable ways that our brains cope with the loss of sight by finding rich new forms of perception. “Elaborate and gorgeously detailed.... Again and again, Sacks invites readers to imagine their way into minds unlike their own, encouraging a radical form of empathy.” —Los Angeles Times With compassion and insight, Dr. Oliver Sacks again illuminates the mysteries of the brain by introducing us to some remarkable characters, including Pat, who remains a vivacious communicator despite the stroke that deprives her of speech, and Howard, a novelist who loses the ability to read. Sacks investigates those who can see perfectly well but are unable to recognize faces, even those of their own children. He describes totally blind people who navigate by touch and smell; and others who, ironically, become hyper-visual. Finally, he recounts his own battle with an eye tumor and the strange visual symptoms it caused. As he has done in classics like The Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and Awakenings, Dr. Sacks shows us that medicine is both an art and a science, and that our ability to imagine what it is to see with another person's mind is what makes us truly human.

The Mind at Work
The Mind at Work

Author: Mike Rose

Publisher: Viking Adult

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 296

ISBN-13:

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In the tradition of Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimedand Studs Terkel’s Working, The Mind at Workis an illuminating reassessment of American labor. Testimonials to physical work have always celebrated the dignity, the economic and moral value, even the nobility of blue-collar labor, but rarely the thought required to get the job done right. The lightning-fast organization and mental calculations of the waitress; the complex spatial mathematics of the carpenter; the aesthetic and intellectual dexterity of the hair stylist—our failure to acknowledge or respect these qualities has undermined a large portion of America’s working population. In The Mind at Workaward-winning writer Mike Rose sets the record straight by taking a long hard look at the intellectual demands of common work.Integrating personal stories of his own working-class family with interviews, vivid snapshots of people on the job, and current research in social science and cognitive psychology, Rose draws a brilliantly original portrait of America at work. As he probes the countless decisions, computations, and subtle judgments made every day by welders and plumbers, waitresses and electricians, Rose redefines the nature of important work and overturns the “hand/brain” dichotomy that blinds us to the real contributions of working people.

The Book of Minds
The Book of Minds

Author: Philip Ball

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2022-06-28

Total Pages: 513

ISBN-13: 0226822044

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Popular science writer Philip Ball explores a range of sciences to map our answers to a huge, philosophically rich question: How do we even begin to think about minds that are not human? Sciences from zoology to astrobiology, computer science to neuroscience, are seeking to understand minds in their own distinct disciplinary realms. Taking a uniquely broad view of minds and where to find them—including in plants, aliens, and God—Philip Ball pulls the pieces together to explore what sorts of minds we might expect to find in the universe. In so doing, he offers for the first time a unified way of thinking about what minds are and what they can do, by locating them in what he calls the “space of possible minds.” By identifying and mapping out properties of mind without prioritizing the human, Ball sheds new light on a host of fascinating questions: What moral rights should we afford animals, and can we understand their thoughts? Should we worry that AI is going to take over society? If there are intelligent aliens out there, how could we communicate with them? Should we? Understanding the space of possible minds also reveals ways of making advances in understanding some of the most challenging questions in contemporary science: What is thought? What is consciousness? And what (if anything) is free will? Informed by conversations with leading researchers, Ball’s brilliant survey of current views about the nature and existence of minds is more mind-expanding than we could imagine. In this fascinating panorama of other minds, we come to better know our own.

Simple Minds
Simple Minds

Author: Dan Edward Lloyd

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 1989

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780262121408

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Drawing on philosophy, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, Simple Minds explores the construction of the mind from the matter of the brain.

Minding Minds
Minding Minds

Author: Radu J. Bogdan

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2003-08-11

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13: 9780262261623

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Drawing on philosophical, psychological, and evolutionary perspectives, Bogdan analyzes how primates create the resources for "metamentation"—the ability of the mind to think about its own thoughts. Mental reflexivity, or metamentation—a mind thinking about its own thoughts—underpins reflexive consciousness, deliberation, self-evaluation, moral judgment, the ability to think ahead, and much more. Yet relatively little in philosophy or psychology has been written about what metamentation actually is, or about why and how it came about. In this book, Radu Bogdan proposes that humans think reflexively because they interpret each other's minds in social contexts of cooperation, communication, education, politics, and so forth. As naive psychology, interpretation was naturally selected among primates as a battery of practical skills that preceded language and advanced thinking. Metamentation began as interpretation mentally rehearsed: through mental sharing of attitudes and information about items of common interest, interpretation conspired with mental rehearsal to develop metamentation. Drawing on philosophical, psychological, and evolutionary perspectives, Bogdan analyzes the main phylogenetic and ontogenetic stages through which primates' abilities to interpret other minds evolve and gradually create the opportunities and resources for metamentation. Contrary to prevailing views, he concludes that metamentation benefits from, but is not a predetermined outcome of, logical abilities, language, and consciousness.

Shadows in the Mind's Eye
Shadows in the Mind's Eye

Author: Janyre Tromp

Publisher: Kregel Publications

Published: 2022-04-19

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0825477948

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"Tromp weaves a complex historical tale incorporating love, suspense, hurt, and healing--all the elements that keep the pages turning." —Julie Cantrell, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of Perennials Charlotte Anne Mattas longs to turn back the clock. Before her husband, Sam, went to serve his country in the war, he was the man everyone could rely on--responsible, intelligent, and loving. But the person who's come back to their family farm is very different from the protector Annie remembers. Sam's experience in the Pacific theater has left him broken in ways no one can understand--but that everyone is learning to fear. Tongues start wagging after Sam nearly kills his own brother. Now when he claims to have seen men on the mountain when no one else has seen them, Annie isn't the only one questioning his sanity and her safety. If there were criminals haunting the hills, there should be evidence beyond his claims. Is he really seeing what he says, or is his war-tortured mind conjuring ghosts? Annie desperately wants to believe her husband. But between his irrational choices and his nightmares leaking into the daytime, she's terrified he's going mad. Can she trust God to heal Sam's mental wounds--or will sticking by him mean keeping her marriage at the cost of her own life? Debut novelist Janyre Tromp delivers a deliciously eerie, Hitchcockian story filled with love and suspense. Readers of psychological thrillers and historical fiction by Jaime Jo Wright and Sarah Sundin will add Tromp to their favorite authors list.

The Extended Mind
The Extended Mind

Author: Richard Menary

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 391

ISBN-13: 0262014033

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Leading scholars respond to the famous proposition by Andy Clark and David Chalmers that cognition and mind are not located exclusively in the head.

Interpreting Minds
Interpreting Minds

Author: Radu J. Bogdan

Publisher: Bradford Books

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 9780262524179

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In this original and provocative book, Bogdan proposes that the ability to interpret others' mental states should be viewed as an evolutionary adaptation.

The Mind's Eye
The Mind's Eye

Author: Ralph Radach

Publisher: Elsevier

Published: 2003-06-05

Total Pages: 763

ISBN-13: 0080518923

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The book provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art overview of current research on cognitive and applied aspects of eye movements. The contents include peer-reviewed chapters based on a selection of papers presented at the 11th European Conference on Eye Movements (Turku, Finland 2001), supplemented by invited contributions. The ECEM conference series brings together researchers from various disciplines with an interest to use eye-tracking to study perceptual and higher order cognitive functions. The contents of the book faithfully reflect the scope and diversity of interest in eye-tracking as a fruitful tool both in basic and applied research. It consists of five sections: visual information processing and saccadic eye movements; empirical studies of reading and language production; computational models of eye movements in reading; eye-tracking as a tool to study human-computer interaction; and eye movement applications in media and communication research. Each section is concluded by a commentary chapter by one of the leading authorities in the field. These commentaries discuss and integrate the contributions in the section and provide an expert view on the most significant present and future developments in the respective areas. The book is a reference volume including a large body of new empirical work but also principal theoretical viewpoints of leading research groups in the field.