Mind and Mechanism

Mind and Mechanism

Author: Drew V. McDermott

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 9780262133920

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An exploration of the mind-body problem from the perspective of artificial intelligence.


The Mechanism of Mind

The Mechanism of Mind

Author: Edward de Bono

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2015-07-02

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1473527570

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The Mechanism of Mind presents Edward de Bono’s original theories on how the brain functions, processes information and organises it. It explains why the brain, the ’mechanism’, can only work in certain ways and introduces the four basic types of thinking that have gone on to inform his life’s work, namely ‘natural thinking’, ‘logical thinking’,’ mathematical thinking’ and ‘lateral thinking’. De Bono also outlines his argument for introducing the word ‘PO’ as an alternative to the word ‘NO’ when putting lateral thinking into practice. Drawing on colourful visual imagery to help explain his theories and thought-processes, from light bulbs and sugar cubes to photography and water erosion, The Mechanism of Mind remains as fascinating and as insightful as it was when it was first published in 1969. This is a must-read for anyone who wants to gain a greater understanding of how the mind works and organises information – and how Edward de Bono came to develop his creative thinking tools.


The New Behaviorism

The New Behaviorism

Author: J. E. R. Staddon

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 9781841690148

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First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.


The Creative Mind

The Creative Mind

Author: Margaret A. Boden

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2004-02-24

Total Pages: 359

ISBN-13: 1134379587

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This second edition of The Creative Mind has been updated to include recent developments in artificial intelligence, with a new preface, introduction and conclusion by the author.


Irreducible Mind

Irreducible Mind

Author: Edward F. Kelly

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 836

ISBN-13: 9781442202061

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Current mainstream opinion in psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind holds that all aspects of human mind and consciousness are generated by physical processes occurring in brains. Views of this sort have dominated recent scholarly publication. The present volume, however, demonstrates empirically that this reductive materialism is not only incomplete but false. The authors systematically marshal evidence for a variety of psychological phenomena that are extremely difficult, and in some cases clearly impossible, to account for in conventional physicalist terms. Topics addressed include phenomena of extreme psychophysical influence, memory, psychological automatisms and secondary personality, near-death experiences and allied phenomena, genius-level creativity, and 'mystical' states of consciousness both spontaneous and drug-induced. The authors further show that these rogue phenomena are more readily accommodated by an alternative 'transmission' or 'filter' theory of mind/brain relations advanced over a century ago by a largely forgotten genius, F. W. H. Myers, and developed further by his friend and colleague William James. This theory, moreover, ratifies the commonsense conception of human beings as causally effective conscious agents, and is fully compatible with leading-edge physics and neuroscience. The book should command the attention of all open-minded persons concerned with the still-unsolved mysteries of the mind.


Mind in Motion

Mind in Motion

Author: Barbara Tversky

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2019-05-21

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 0465093078

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An eminent psychologist offers a major new theory of human cognition: movement, not language, is the foundation of thought When we try to think about how we think, we can't help but think of words. Indeed, some have called language the stuff of thought. But pictures are remembered far better than words, and describing faces, scenes, and events defies words. Anytime you take a shortcut or play chess or basketball or rearrange your furniture in your mind, you've done something remarkable: abstract thinking without words. In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas. Spatial thinking even underlies the structure and meaning of language: why we say we push ideas forward or tear them apart, why we're feeling up or have grown far apart. Like Thinking, Fast and Slow before it, Mind in Motion gives us a new way to think about how--and where--thinking takes place.


Explaining the Brain

Explaining the Brain

Author: Carl F. Craver

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2007-06-07

Total Pages: 329

ISBN-13: 0199299315

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Carl Craver investigates what we are doing when we use neuroscience to explain what>'s going on in the brain. When does an explanation succeed and when does it fail? Craver offers explicit standards for successful explanation of the workings of the brain, on the basis of a systematic view about what neuroscientific explanations are: they are descriptions of mechanisms.


The Mind and its Mechanism

The Mind and its Mechanism

Author: Paul Bousfield

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2015-07-24

Total Pages: 235

ISBN-13: 1317443799

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First published in 1927, the original blurb reads: "Scientists are beginning to believe there is some immaterial thing which performs certain functions that the material mechanism of the brain is powerless to perform. It is the purpose of this book to explain what that immaterial thing is and how it functions. The Mind and Its Mechanism deals with a theory that may conceivably influence the study of psychology, and will interest not only psychologists, but physiologists, physicists and biologists." Now back in print, this title can be read and enjoyed in its historical context.


The World in Your Head

The World in Your Head

Author: Steven M. Lehar

Publisher: Psychology Press

Published: 2003-01-30

Total Pages: 325

ISBN-13: 1135636591

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The World In Your Head: A Gestalt View of the Mechanism of Conscious Experience represents a bold assault on one of the greatest unsolved mysteries in science: the nature of consciousness and the human mind. Rather than examining the brain and nervous system to see what they tell us about the mind, this book begins with an examination of conscious experience to see what it can tell us about the brain. Through this analysis, the first and most obvious observation is that consciousness appears as a volumetric spatial void, containing colored objects and surfaces. This reveals that the representation in the brain takes the form of an explicit volumetric spatial model of external reality. Therefore, the world we see around us is not the real world itself, but merely a miniature virtual-reality replica of that world in an internal representation. In fact, the phenomena of dreams and hallucinations clearly demonstrate the capacity of the brain to construct complete virtual worlds even in the absence of sensory input. Perception is somewhat like a guided hallucination, based on sensory stimulation. This insight allows us to examine the world of visual experience not as scientists exploring the external world, but as perceptual scientists examining a rich and complex internal representation. This unique approach to investigating mental function has implications in a wide variety of related fields, including the nature of language and abstract thought, and motor control and behavior. It also has implications to the world of music, art, and dance, showing how the patterns of regularity and periodicity in space and time--apparent in those aesthetic domains--reflect the periodic basis set of the underlying harmonic resonance representation in the brain.