Reclaiming Cognition: The Primacy of Action, Intention and Emotion (Journal of Consciousness Studies, 6, No. 11-12) - Softcover

A notable collection of essays that will give much pleasure to those who have been missing the living body - and its actions and reactions - in contemporary cognitive and neural studies; a must read for those who haven't. Antonio Damasio This collection is a valuable contribution to the elaboration and application of an understanding of mind and brain as situated and embodied. As such, it is timely and important. Although it is unlikely anyone will agree with all the papers, together they pose a challenge every cognitive scientist, neuroscientist and philosopher has to face. Hubert Dreyfus This book brings together a wide variety of contributions to the search for a science of the mind that will be capable of describing and explaining the bewildering diversity of mental phenomena. The dead hand of 'cognitivism' is finally being lifted, allowing us to see the mind as a biological and cultural entity rather than a disembodied symbol processor inspired by the mathematical formalisms that underpin computer science. Horst Hendriks-Jansen Views of the mind as essentially embodied and embedded in its environment have recently made powerful advances in understanding perception and action and now have taken on cognition. This timely and richly interdisciplinary collection of essays, by innovative thinkers, displays the current exuberance of theoretical alternatives to the computational mainstream. Susan Hurley The evidence from all over the cognitive sciences is overwhelming: Conceptual systems and language are embodied in the deepest way, shaped by the nature of our brains, our bodies, and our everyday functioning in the world. Reclaiming Cognition helps to wash away the old view of the mind as abstract and disembodied, of thought as symbol manipulation - something a computer could do - and of emotion as separate from reason. George Lakoff Just as the 1990s were the Decade of the Brain, many have argued that we are now entering the Decade of the Mind. Meeting such a challenge requires that we transcend the crude reductionism and narrow cognitivism that has characterized much of the brain and behavioural sciences of the past century. Reclaiming Cognition teaches us that minds are not architectural modular structures that deal in information, but are constituted by the dynamic interactions of perceiver and percept, knower and that which is to be known - socially, developmentally and evolutionarily formed. Steven Rose Reclaiming Cognition is a potent antidote to shake up a number of received ideas about mind that have dominated cognitive science since its roots in the 1960s. In retrospect it now seems simply amazing that for so long many believed that mind was dis-embodied, abstract, symbol-based, and a-historical. The diverse contributions in this book provide excellent examples of recent work that extends alternative approaches that had remained in the margin and are now coming to the fore. Francisco J. Varela

"The evidence from all over the cognitive sciences is overwhelming: Conceptual systems and language are embodied in the deepest way, shaped by the nature of our brains, our bodies, and our everyday functioning in the world. Reclaiming Cognition helps to wash away the old view of the mind as abstract and disembodied, of thought as symbol manipulation - something a computer could do - and of emotion as separate from reason."--George Lakoff

"Reclaiming Cognition is a potent antidote to shake up a number of received ideas about mind that have dominated cognitive science since its roots in the 1960s. In retrospect it now seems simply amazing that for so long many believed that mind was dis-embodied, abstract, symbol-based, and a-historical. The diverse contributions in this book provide excellent examples of recent work that extends alternative approaches that had remained in the margin and are now coming to the fore."--Francisco J. Varela

"Views of the mind as essentially embodied and embedded in its environment have recently made powerful advances in understanding perception and action and now have taken on cognition. This timely and richly interdisciplinary collection of essays, by innovative thinkers, displays the current exuberance of theoretical alternatives to the computational mainstream."--Susan Hurley

"A notable collection of essays that will give much pleasure to those who have been missing the living body - and its actions and reactions - in contemporary cognitive and neural studies; a must read for those who haven't."--Antonio Damasio

"Just as the 1990s were the Decade of the Brain, many have argued that we are now entering the Decade of the Mind. Meeting such a challenge requires that we transcend the crude reductionism and narrow cognitivism that has characterized much of the brain and behavioural sciences of the past century. Reclaiming Cognition teaches us that minds are not architectural modular structures that deal in information, but are constituted by the dynamic interactions of perceiver and percept, knower and that which is to be known - socially, developmentally and evolutionarily formed."--Steven Rose

"This book brings together a wide variety of contributions to the search for a science of the mind that will be capable of describing and explaining the bewildering diversity of mental phenomena. The dead hand of 'cognitivism' is finally being lifted, allowing us to see the mind as a biological and cultural entity rather than a disembodied symbol processor inspired by the mathematical formalisms that underpin computer science."--Horst Hendriks-Jansen

"This collection is a valuable contribution to the elaboration and application of an understanding of mind and brain as situated and embodied. As such, it is timely and important. Although it is unlikely anyone will agree with all the papers, together they pose a challenge every cognitive scientist, neuroscientist and philosopher has to face."--Hubert Dreyfus

"This collection is a valuable contribution to the elaboration and application of an understanding of mind and brain as situated and embodied. As such, it is timely and important. Although it is unlikely anyone will agree with all the papers, together they pose a challenge every cognitive scientist, neuroscientist and philosopher has to face."

--Hubert Dreyfus

"Reclaiming Cognition is a potent antidote to shake up a number of received ideas about mind that have dominated cognitive science since its roots in the 1960s. In retrospect it now seems simply amazing that for so long many believed that mind was dis-embodied, abstract, symbol-based, and a-historical. The diverse contributions in this book provide excellent examples of recent work that extends alternative approaches that had remained in the margin and are now coming to the fore."

--Francisco J. Varela

Traditional cognitive science is Cartesian in the sense that it takes as fundamental the distinction between the mental and the physical, the mind and the world. This leads to the claim that cognition is representational and best explained using models derived from AI and computational theory. The authors in this special issue depart radically from this model.