Philosophy of Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction

by Bermudez,Jose Luis

• ISBN13: 9780415275941
• ISBN10: 0415275946
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-06-06
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Philosophy of Psychology is an introduction to philosophical problems that arise in the scientific study of cognition and behavior.José Luis Bermúdez introduces the philosophy of psychology as an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature and mechanisms of cognition. Philosophy of Psychology charts out four influential 'pictures of the mind' and uses them to explore central topics in the philosophical foundations of psychology, including the relation between different levels of studying the mind/brain; the nature and scope of psychological explanation; the architecture of cognition; and the relation between thought and language.An introductory chapter looks at what the philosophy of psychology is, tracing its historical background and exploring its relationship to philosophy of mind and to psychology itself. Further chapters cover all the core concepts and themes found in undergraduate courses in philosophy of psychology, including:- Models of psychological explanation- The nature of commonsense psychology- Arguments for the autonomy of psychology- Functionalist approaches to cognition- Computational models of the mind- Neural network modeling- Rationality and mental causation- Perception, action and cognition- The language of thought and the architecture of cognitionPhilosophy of Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction is a very clear and well-structured textbook from one of the leaders in the field.

Author Biography

Jose Luis Bermudez is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program at Washington University in St Louis, USA

Table of Contents

List of illustrations	viii
Preface	ix
Acknowledgments	xii
What is the philosophy of psychology?	1	(15)
What counts as psychology?	2	(1)
Historical background	3	(3)
Psychological concepts and the philosophy of psychology	6	(7)
Philosophy of psychology and philosophy of mind	13	(3)
Levels of psychological explanation and the interface problem	16	(24)
Explanation at different levels	17	(10)
Personal and subpersonal levels of explanation	27	(4)
Horizontal explanation, vertical explanation and commonsense psychology	31	(4)
The interface problem and four pictures of the mind	35	(5)
The nature of commonsense psychology: the autonomous mind and the functional mind	40	(31)
The autonomous mind and commonsense psychology	41	(3)
The autonomous mind and the interface problem	44	(8)
The functional mind	52	(6)
Philosophical functionalism and psychological functionalism	58	(3)
Psychological functionalism and the interface problem	61	(10)
Causes in the mind: from the functional mind to the representational mind	71	(26)
Causation by content: problems with the functional mind	71	(10)
The representational mind and the language of thought	81	(11)
The mind as computer	92	(5)
Neural networks and the neurocomputational mind	97	(37)
Top-down explanation vs the co-evolutionary research strategy	97	(8)
Cognition, co-evolution and the brain	105	(4)
Neural network models	109	(10)
Neural network modeling and the co-evolutionary research paradigm: the example of language	119	(15)
Rationality, mental causation and commonsense psychology	134	(38)
Real patterns without real causes	135	(18)
How anomalous is the mental?	153	(10)
The counterfactual approach	163	(7)
Overview	170	(2)
The scope of commonsense psychology	172	(36)
Thinking about the scope of commonsense psychology	173	(5)
Implicit and explicit commonsense psychology: the broad construal	178	(7)
Modest revisionism: the simulationist proposal	185	(9)
Narrowing the scope of commonsense psychology (1)	194	(4)
Narrowing the scope of commonsense psychology (2)	198	(7)
A suggestion?	205	(3)
From perception to action: the standard view and its critics	208	(36)
From perception to action: the standard view	209	(6)
Cognitive architecture and the standard view	215	(6)
The distinction between perception and cognition	221	(7)
Domain-specific reasoning and the massive modularity hypothesis	228	(16)
Propositional attitudes: contents and vehicles	244	(35)
Another look at the interface problem	245	(4)
The argument for structure	249	(5)
The problem of structure in artificial neural networks	254	(6)
Rejecting the structure requirement	260	(6)
Finding structure in artificial neural networks	266	(10)
Overview	276	(3)
Thinking and language	279	(39)
Thinking in words (1): the inner speech hypothesis	280	(7)
Thinking in words (2): the rewiring hypothesis	287	(8)
The state of play	295	(2)
Practical reasoning and the language of thought	297	(7)
Perceptual integration	304	(6)
Concept learning	310	(8)
Concluding thoughts: toward a fifth picture	318	(15)
Annotated bibliography	333	(17)
Bibliography	350	(21)
Index	371