The Mind as a Scientific Object: Between Brain and Culture

by Christina E. Erneling, David M. Johnson

Overview

What holds together the various fields that are supposed to consititute the general intellectual discipline that people now call cognitive science? In this book, Erneling and Johnson identify two problems with defining this discipline. First, some theorists identify the common subject matter as the mind, but scientists and philosophers have not been able to agree on any single, satisfactory answer to the question of what the mind is. Second, those who speculate about the general characteristics that belong to cognitive science tend to assume that all the particular fields falling under the rubric—psychology, linguistics, biology, and son on—are of roughly equal value in their ability to shed light on the nature of mind. This book argues that all the cognitive science disciplines are not equally able to provide answers to ontological questions about the mind, but rather that only neurophysiology and cultural psychology are suited to answer these questions. However, since the cultural account of mind has long been ignored in favor of the neurophysiological account, Erneling and Johnson bring together contributions that focus especially on different versions of the cultural account of the mind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195139327
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	03/28/2004
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	568
Product dimensions:	9.40(w) x 6.30(h) x 1.40(d)

Table of Contents

General Introduction, David Johnson
Section 1. Where Are we at Present, and How Did we Get There?
1.0. Section Introduction, Christina Erneling
1.1. The Relevance of the Philosophy of Psychology, Rom Harre
1.2. Mind as Scientific Object: An Historical, Philosophical Exploration, Thomas Leahey
1.3. The Emergence of Minds in Space and Time, Jagdish Hattiangadi
1.4. Is the Mind a Scientific Object of Study?: Lessons from History, Otniel E. Dror
Section 2. Is the Study of Mind Continuous with the Rest of Science?
2.0. Section Introduction, David Johnson
2.1. Psychology as Engineering, Thomas Leahey
2.2. Epistemic Dualism, Gunther Stent
2.3. Mind, Brain, and Culture, David Olson
2.4. Chalmers' Naturalistic Dualism: A Case Study in the Irrelevance of the Mind-Body Problem to the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Don Ross
2.5. Emergence and Efficacy, William Seager
Section 3. Eliminative Materialism: Sound or Mistaken?
3.0. Section Introduction, David Johnson
3.1. A Particularly Compelling Refutation of Eliminative Materialism, William Lycan
3.2. Common-sense Refutations of Eliminativism, Ausonio Marras
3.3. What Does it Take to be a True Believer?: Against the Opulent Ideology of Eliminative Materialism, David Henderson and Terrance Horgan
3.4. Connectionism and the Propositional Attitudes, Barbara Von Eckhardt
Section 4. Is Mind Just another Name for the Brain and What the Brain Does?
4.0. Section Introduction, Christina Erneling
4.1. All in the Interest of Time-On the Problem of Speed and Cognition, Martin Ingvar
4.2. Can There Be a Cognitive Neuroscience of Central Cognitive Systems?, Vinod Goel
4.3. The Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory: A Framework for the Science of Mind, Itiel Dror and Robin Thomas
4.4. Gall's Legacy Revisited: Decomposition and Localization in Cognitive Neuroscience, Tadeusz Zadwidski and William Bechtel
Section 5. Does Evolution Provide a Key to the Scientific Study of Mind?
5.0. Section Introduction, Christina Erneling
5.1. The Emergence of Thought, Peter Grdenfors
5.2. The Mind as an Object of Scientific Study, Jagdish Hattiangadi
5.3. The Significance of Ape Language Research, Stuart Shanker and Talbot J. Taylor
5.4. I-Object: Mind and Brain as Darwinian Things, Charles Lumsden
Section 6. Is the Mind a Cultural Entity?
6.0. Section Introduction, David Johnson
6.1. Ignace Meyerson and Cultural Psychology, Jerome Bruner
6.2. Strong Culturalism, David Bakhurst
6.3. 'Text' as a Model of the Mind, Jens Brockmeier
Section 7. Rationality: Cultural or Natural?
7.0. Section Introduction, Christina Erneling
7.1. Beyond the Mind-Body Problem, Timothy van Gelder
7.2. Workshop Rationality and the Reasonable Persistence of Dogmatism, Ian Jarvie
7.3. Is Cognitive Development Equivalent to Scientific Development?, Christina E. Erneling
7.4. Mind, Brain, and the Upper Paleolithic, David Martel Johnson
8.1 Afterword, Christina Erneling

Editorial Reviews

"This is an unusually cogent book, whose editors look beyond the accepted disciplinary structures of cognitive science to the environment and human culture in order to examine 'mind.' Erneling and Johnson succeed admirably in exploring the alternative of the cultural approach to mentality, whilst recognizing the significance of neurophysiology."—The Mind as a Scientific Object

"The Mind As a Scientific Object is interesting and accessible not just to specialists but to a wide, interdisciplinary audience as well. It presents with a picture of selected, important themes in the field of cognitive science that is deeper than was previously available, but that still manages to be of wide interest." —SirReadaLot.org

From the Publisher