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This book provides readers with a new working model of the human mind based on contemporary trends in cognitive science. Taking a distinct biological approach, the book presents mind and brain as two sides of the same coin while at the same time emphasizing the need for separate accounts. The reader is introduced step by step to the mind account showing how it operates.
The text explores the mind's basic architecture examining how its family of eleven systems interact flexibly and collaboratively to process information, mostly subconsciously. Key topics include the five systems that build specialized representations from sensory input, consciousness, memory, emotions, comparisons between human and animal cognition, language processing, and concepts of Self, Free Will, and spirituality. The book illuminates how general principles of activation, association, and competition act in combination with the unique principles that govern each of the mind's specialized systems. One chapter explains two of these systems in more detail to illustrate how expertise from any relevant area of research can be used elaborate the basic model.
Written in an accessible style, The Human Mind Revealed offers valuable insights for students and scholars across cognitive science disciplines as well as general readers curious about how the mind works.
List of contents
Table of Contents. Preface. 1. Minding the Brain. 2. Brain and Mind Maps Compared. 3. The Knowledge Network. 4. Reflections of Reality. 5. Building our Inner World. 6. Activating Knowledge. 7. Remembering and Forgetting. 8. Making Meanings. 9. Value and Emotion. 10. Space and Movement. 11. Comparing Species. 12. Conceptualising Consciousness. 13. Different Modes of Awareness. 14. Communication between Humans. 15. Human Language Decoded. 16. Concluding Reflections. Bibliographical References. Short Glossary. Index.
About the author
Michael Sharwood Smith is Emeritus Professor of Languages at Heriot-Watt University in Scotland, UK. His major research interest is cognitive representation, processing and development with special reference to human communication and the language sciences.
