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This popular textbook presents a unified and up-to-date introduction to the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science.
List of contents
Preface; Introduction: the challenge of cognitive science; Part I. Historical Landmarks: 1. The prehistory of cognitive science; 2. The discipline matures: three milestones; 3. The turn to the brain; Part II. Models and Tools: 4. Physical symbol systems and the language of thought; 5. Neural networks and distributed information processing; 6. Applying dynamical systems theory to model the mind; 7. Bayesianism in cognitive science; 8. Modules and architectures; 9. Strategies for brain mapping; Part III. Applications: 10. Models of language learning; 11. Object perception and folk physics; 12. Machine learning: from expert systems to deep learning; 13. Exploring mindreading; 14. Robotics: from GOFAI to situated cognition and behavior-based robotics; 15. The cognitive science of consciousness; 16. The emotions: from cognitive science to affective science; 17. Looking ahead: challenges and opportunities; Glossary; References; Index.
About the author
José Luis Bermúdez's research interests are interdisciplinary in nature at the intersection of philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience. His many books include The Paradox of Self-Consciousness (MIT Press, 1998), which analyzes the nature of self-awareness; Thinking without Words (Oxford, 2003), which offers a model for thinking about the cognitive achievements and abilities of prelinguistic infants and nonlinguistic humans, and Decision Theory and Rationality (Oxford, 2009), which explores tensions in how the concept of rationality is defined and formalized in different academic disciplines. Recent books include Understanding “I”: Language and Thought, published by Oxford University Press in 2017 and The Bodily Self: Selected Essays by MIT Press in 2018. His most recent book, The Power of Frames (Cambridge, 2020) was supported by an ACLS fellowship for 2018-2019 and an NEH Summer Stipend for 2018. A target article with peer commentary based on The Power of Frames appeared in Behavioral and Brain Sciences (2022).
Summary
This popular textbook has been significantly rewritten for the fourth edition to make it more accessible to students and easier for instructors to use. It presents a unified and up-to-date introduction to cognitive science as a field of inquiry in its own right, and includes a new chapter on emotions.
