The Search for Mind: A New Foundation for Cognitive Science

The degree to which cognitive science as currently conceived can aspire to be the science of mind is a difficult issue. This book proposes an integrated approach to cognitive science. Reconstructing cognitive science in a presuppositionless way, the first part includes clear introductions to the disciplines which traditionally are seen to constitute cognitive science. From this analysis, a framework emerges in which such issues as the relation between symbolic and subsymbolic cognition, the role of embodiment, the interrelation of context, situated cognition and the structure of language, and the real causative role of affect incognition are resolved. The second part of the book focuses on the nature of symbol systems, considered generically, before going on to detail a theory of consciousness and selfhood. Finally, these strands are woven together in a new theory of cognition and its development. It is concluded that a science that fully attempts to treat cognition must remain "au fait" with the findings from all other approaches to the study of mind, ranging from the purely behaviourist to the purely experiential.