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Read more about Mind, Body, World: Foundations of Cognitive Science

Mind, Body, World: Foundations of Cognitive Science

(7 reviews)

Michael R. W. Dawson, University of Alberta

Copyright Year: 2013

ISBN 13: 9781927356173

Publisher: Athabasca University Press

Language: English

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Reviews

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Reviewed by Maria Falikman, Teaching Professor of Psychology, University of the South on 11/26/23

The textbook is very comprehensive. It introduces the history, major approaches, main interdisciplinary research areas, and controversies in cognitive science in great detail. The author successfully combines this attention to detail with a... read more

Reviewed by David Quigley, Research Associate, CU Boulder on 10/6/19

The book contains a very thorough review of the origins and key approaches found in Cognitive Science - as the title claims. The table of contents, list of tables / figures, bibliography, etc. are complete and supportive. That said, the book is... read more

Reviewed by Sri Siddhi Upadhyay, Assistant Professor of Psychology, JMU on 11/25/18

The author states upfront that this text is not an introductory text to Cognitive Psychology. Instead, it focuses on the interdisciplinary aspects of Cognitive Science and is best for students who already have a foundation in principles of... read more

Reviewed by Jason Finley, Assistant Professor of Psychology, Fontbonne University on 6/19/18

This text is comprehensive, authoritative, and well-cited. It provides a deep and fascinating tour through the momentous ideas and technological breakthroughs that gave rise to the interdisciplinary field of cognitive science (a confluence of... read more

Reviewed by Valerie Langlois, Ph.D. Student (Cognitive Psychology), University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on 6/19/18

Though the textbook does cover the areas and ideas of the subject appropriately, I believe that it focuses more heavily on the computational side of the cognitive science field. Furthermore, the author states in the Preface that not only is this... read more

Reviewed by Amy Fountain, Associate Professor, NTE, University of Arizona on 6/10/15

The text covers a broad swath of intellectual history in the development of the Cognitive Sciences - beginning with the Greeks and discussing developments as recent as 2010. The discussion interweaves perspectives from linguistics, philosophy and... read more

Reviewed by Kellie Hall, Professor, California Polytechnic State University on 7/15/14

The book is extremely comprehensive. The history and evolution of the specific field of cognitive science, especially as it relates to information processing is examined here. The field fragmented into three differing views of this notion of... read more

Table of Contents

  • Chapter 1. The Cognitive Sciences: One or Many?
  • Chapter 2. Multiple Levels of Investigation
  • Chapter 3. Elements of Classical Cognitive Science
  • Chapter 4. Elements of Connectionist Cognitive Science
  • Chapter 5. Elements of Embodied Cognitive Science
  • Chapter 6. Classical Music and Cognitive Science
  • Chapter 7. Marks of the Classical?
  • Chapter 8. Seeing and Visualizing
  • Chapter 9. Towards a Cognitive Dialectic

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About the Book

Cognitive science arose in the 1950s when it became apparent that a number of disciplines, including psychology, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy, were fragmenting. Perhaps owing to the field's immediate origins in cybernetics, as well as to the foundational assumption that cognition is information processing, cognitive science initially seemed more unified than psychology. However, as a result of differing interpretations of the foundational assumption and dramatically divergent views of the meaning of the term information processing, three separate schools emerged: classical cognitive science, connectionist cognitive science, and embodied cognitive science.

Examples, cases, and research findings taken from the wide range of phenomena studied by cognitive scientists effectively explain and explore the relationship among the three perspectives. Intended to introduce both graduate and senior undergraduate students to the foundations of cognitive science, Mind, Body, World addresses a number of questions currently being asked by those practicing in the field: What are the core assumptions of the three different schools? What are the relationships between these different sets of core assumptions? Is there only one cognitive science, or are there many different cognitive sciences? Giving the schools equal treatment and displaying a broad and deep understanding of the field, Dawson highlights the fundamental tensions and lines of fragmentation that exist among the schools and provides a refreshing and unifying framework for students of cognitive science.

About the Contributors

Author

Michael R. W. Dawson is a professor of psychology at the University of Alberta. He is the author of numerous scientific papers as well as the books Understanding Cognitive Science (1998), Minds and Machines (2004), Connectionism: A Hands-on Approach (2005), and From Bricks to Brains: The Embodied Cognitive Science of LEGO Robots (2010).

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