This is the first major text to offer a truly comprehensive review of cognitive science in its fullest sense. Ranging from artificial intelligence models and cognitive psychology to recent discursive and cultural theories, Rom Harré offers a breathtakingly original yet accessible integration of the field. At its core this textbook addresses the question "is psychology a science?" with a clear account of scientific method and explanation and their bearing on psychological research.
Philosophical theorizing about language now involves an increasing emphasis on empirical work and a renewed convergence with philosophy of mind, formal semantics and logic. This new text reflects this evolution. 'Philosophical Perspectives on Language' is distinguished in several important respects from other introductions to the topic. Rather than looking at philosophy of language as a collection of (at best) loosely related topics - speech meaning, etc. - this book is organized around a unifying theme: language as a system of symbols that is known and used.
Three Philosophical Filmmakers - Hitchcock, Welles, Renoir
Although Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles, and Jean Renoir do not pontificate about "eternal verities or analytical niceties," as Irving Singer remarks in Three Philosophical Filmmakers, each expresses, through his work, his particular vision of reality. In this study of these great directors, Singer examines the ways in which meaning and technique interact within their different visions.
hough it did not yet exist as a discrete field of scientific inquiry, biology was at the heart of many of the most important debates in seventeenth-century philosophy. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the work of G. W. Leibniz. In Divine Machines, Justin Smith offers the first in-depth examination of Leibniz's deep and complex engagement with the empirical life sciences of his day, in areas as diverse as medicine, physiology, taxonomy, generation theory, and paleontology. He shows how these wide-ranging pursuits were not only central to Leibniz's philosophical interests, but often provided the insights that led to some of his best-known philosophical doctrines.
Philosophers, more even than poets and composers, set themselves apart from common humanity to engage in their uncommonly rarefied practices. In the unlikely event of their productions becoming even vaguely well known they shun publicity. Their obituaries and encyclopaedic entries condense life long achievements into garbled accounts of their philosophies, dates of publication of their more respectable works and odd biographical details.
