Download or read book Mind Shapes written by Alan R. Kahn and published by Paragon House Publishers. This book was released on 2005-03-30 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our everyday encounters, we are continuously challenged by people who think and respond in ways different from ourselves. Each one of us pays attention to different aspects of life, interprets experiences differently, understands certain issues better than others, communicates with differing styles, and uses different criteria for judging and believing others. Parents of a family with several children are usually amazed by the diverse ways in which the children develop. Managers are confounded by the unexpected misunderstandings among themselves and those they manage. Educators find it difficult to account for the broad spectrum of students' responses to a single course of study. And in relationships, one is often perplexed at the ways in which common, everyday words are sometimes interpreted. Those of us who study the ways in which people interact, continue to marvel at the differences people bring to thinking and communicating.For the past 20 years, Dr. Kahn has led a team of scientists in in-depth studies of the different brain processes leading to the different types of information processing in people. This research has developed tools which can measure how people reveal the structure of their thought processes in the flow of their communications. This has enabled the team to develop a model that organizes cognitive structures according to a new paradigm, one that explicitly shows the connections between cognition, input, and output. This paradigm identifies sixteen different ways in which people process information, and describes the underlying brain mechanisms which are responsible. Further, Mind Shapes presents how these differences developed through the stages of human evolution and the way they are expressed in the steps of modern child development.Theory and practicum come together as Mind Shapes links physiology of information processing to behavior, and shows how different people communicate, learn, and make decisions. This model has been successfully applied to education, management, consumer communications, and psychological counseling: dimensions of life where understanding human behavior and motivation are critical to success. Mind Shapes provides its readers with useful tools which were developed as a result of this experience.
Download or read book Mind in Motion written by Barbara Tversky and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 389 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eminent psychologist offers a major new theory of human cognition: movement, not language, is the foundation of thought When we try to think about how we think, we can't help but think of words. Indeed, some have called language the stuff of thought. But pictures are remembered far better than words, and describing faces, scenes, and events defies words. Anytime you take a shortcut or play chess or basketball or rearrange your furniture in your mind, you've done something remarkable: abstract thinking without words. In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas. Spatial thinking even underlies the structure and meaning of language: why we say we push ideas forward or tear them apart, why we're feeling up or have grown far apart. Like Thinking, Fast and Slow before it, Mind in Motion gives us a new way to think about how--and where--thinking takes place.
Download or read book How the Body Shapes the Mind written by Shaun Gallagher and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2006-10-12 with total page 519 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How the Body Shapes the Mind is an interdisciplinary work that addresses philosophical questions by appealing to evidence found in experimental psychology, neuroscience, studies of pathologies, and developmental psychology. There is a growing consensus across these disciplines that the contribution of embodiment to cognition is inescapable. Because this insight has been developed across a variety of disciplines, however, there is still a need to develop a common vocabulary that is capable of integrating discussions of brain mechanisms in neuroscience, behavioural expressions in psychology, design concerns in artificial intelligence and robotics, and debates about embodied experience in the phenomenology and philosophy of mind. Shaun Gallagher's book aims to contribute to the formulation of that common vocabulary and to develop a conceptual framework that will avoid both the overly reductionistic approaches that explain everything in terms of bottom-up neuronal mechanisms, and inflationistic approaches that explain everything in terms of Cartesian, top-down cognitive states. Gallagher pursues two basic sets of questions. The first set consists of questions about the phenomenal aspects of the structure of experience, and specifically the relatively regular and constant features that we find in the content of our experience. If throughout conscious experience there is a constant reference to one's own body, even if this is a recessive or marginal awareness, then that reference constitutes a structural feature of the phenomenal field of consciousness, part of a framework that is likely to determine or influence all other aspects of experience. The second set of questions concerns aspects of the structure of experience that are more hidden, those that may be more difficult to get at because they happen before we know it. They do not normally enter into the content of experience in an explicit way, and are often inaccessible to reflective consciousness. To what extent, and in what ways, are consciousness and cognitive processes, which include experiences related to perception, memory, imagination, belief, judgement, and so forth, shaped or structured by the fact that they are embodied in this way?
Download or read book Structuring Mind written by Sebastian Watzl and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-09 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is attention? How does attention shape consciousness? In an approach that engages with foundational topics in the philosophy of mind, the theory of action, psychology, and the neurosciences this book provides a unified and comprehensive answer to both questions. Sebastian Watzl shows that attention is a central structural feature of the mind. The first half of the book provides an account of the nature of attention. Attention is prioritizing, it consists in regulating priority structures. Attention is not another element of the mind, but constituted by structures that organize, integrate, and coordinate the parts of our mind. Attention thus integrates the perceptual and intellectual, the cognitive and motivational, and the epistemic and practical. The second half of the book concerns the relationship between attention and consciousness. Watzl argues that attentional structure shapes consciousness into what is central and what is peripheral. The center-periphery structure of consciousness cannot be reduced to the structure of how the world appears to the subject. What it is like for us thus goes beyond the way the world appears to us. On this basis, a new view of consciousness is offered. In each conscious experience we actively take a stance on the world we appear to encounter. It is in this sense that our conscious experience is our subjective perspective.
Download or read book The Universal Sense written by Seth S. Horowitz and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2012-09-04 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reveals how the human sense of hearing manipulates how people think, consume, sleep and feel, explaining the hearing science behind such phenomena as why people fall asleep while traveling, the reason fingernails on a chalkboard causes cringing and why songs get stuck in one's head.
Download or read book When They Severed Earth from Sky written by E. J. W. Barber and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2006-09-25 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why were Prometheus and Loki envisioned as chained to rocks? What was the Golden Calf? Why are mirrors believed to carry bad luck? This groundbreaking book points the way to restoring some of that lost history and teaching about storytelling.
Download or read book How Things Shape the Mind written by Lambros Malafouris and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2016-02-12 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An account of the different ways in which things have become cognitive extensions of the human body, from prehistory to the present. An increasingly influential school of thought in cognitive science views the mind as embodied, extended, and distributed rather than brain-bound or “all in the head.” This shift in perspective raises important questions about the relationship between cognition and material culture, posing major challenges for philosophy, cognitive science, archaeology, and anthropology. In How Things Shape the Mind, Lambros Malafouris proposes a cross-disciplinary analytical framework for investigating the ways in which things have become cognitive extensions of the human body. Using a variety of examples and case studies, he considers how those ways might have changed from earliest prehistory to the present. Malafouris's Material Engagement Theory definitively adds materiality—the world of things, artifacts, and material signs—into the cognitive equation. His account not only questions conventional intuitions about the boundaries and location of the human mind but also suggests that we rethink classical archaeological assumptions about human cognitive evolution.
Download or read book The Israeli Mind written by Alon Gratch and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2015-09-01 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Israelis are bold and visionary, passionate and generous. But they can also be grandiose and self-absorbed. Emerging from the depths of Jewish history and the drama of the Zionist rebellion against it, they have a deeply conflicted identity. They are willing to sacrifice themselves for the collective, but also to sacrifice that very collective for a higher, and likely unattainable, ideal. Resolving these internal conflicts and coming to terms with the trauma of the Holocaust are imperative to Israel's survival as a nation and to the stability of the world. Alon Gratch, a clinical psychologist whose family has lived in Israel for generations, is uniquely positioned to confront these issues. Like the Israeli psyche that Gratch details, The Israeli Mind is both intimate and universal. Intelligent and forthright, compassionate but sometimes maddening, it is an utterly compelling read. Drawing on a broad cultural and historical canvas, and weaving in the author's personal and professional experience, The Israeli Mind presents a provocative, first-hand portrait of the Israeli national character.
Download or read book How the Body Shapes the Way We Think written by Rolf Pfeifer and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-10-27 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of embodied intelligence and its implications points toward a theory of intelligence in general; with case studies of intelligent systems in ubiquitous computing, business and management, human memory, and robotics. How could the body influence our thinking when it seems obvious that the brain controls the body? In How the Body Shapes the Way We Think, Rolf Pfeifer and Josh Bongard demonstrate that thought is not independent of the body but is tightly constrained, and at the same time enabled, by it. They argue that the kinds of thoughts we are capable of have their foundation in our embodiment—in our morphology and the material properties of our bodies. This crucial notion of embodiment underlies fundamental changes in the field of artificial intelligence over the past two decades, and Pfeifer and Bongard use the basic methodology of artificial intelligence—"understanding by building"—to describe their insights. If we understand how to design and build intelligent systems, they reason, we will better understand intelligence in general. In accessible, nontechnical language, and using many examples, they introduce the basic concepts by building on recent developments in robotics, biology, neuroscience, and psychology to outline a possible theory of intelligence. They illustrate applications of such a theory in ubiquitous computing, business and management, and the psychology of human memory. Embodied intelligence, as described by Pfeifer and Bongard, has important implications for our understanding of both natural and artificial intelligence.
Download or read book Innate written by Kevin J. Mitchell and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What makes you the way you are--and what makes each of us different from everyone else? In Innate, leading neuroscientist and popular science blogger Kevin Mitchell traces human diversity and individual differences to their deepest level: in the wiring of our brains. Deftly guiding us through important new research, including his own groundbreaking work, he explains how variations in the way our brains develop before birth strongly influence our psychology and behavior throughout our lives, shaping our personality, intelligence, sexuality, and even the way we perceive the world. We all share a genetic program for making a human brain, and the program for making a brain like yours is specifically encoded in your DNA. But, as Mitchell explains, the way that program plays out is affected by random processes of development that manifest uniquely in each person, even identical twins. The key insight of Innate is that the combination of these developmental and genetic variations creates innate differences in how our brains are wired--differences that impact all aspects of our psychology--and this insight promises to transform the way we see the interplay of nature and nurture. Innate also explores the genetic and neural underpinnings of disorders such as autism, schizophrenia, and epilepsy, and how our understanding of these conditions is being revolutionized. In addition, the book examines the social and ethical implications of these ideas and of new technologies that may soon offer the means to predict or manipulate human traits. Compelling and original, Innate will change the way you think about why and how we are who we are."--Provided by the publisher.
Download or read book Christian Contours written by Douglas S. Huffman and published by Kregel Academic. This book was released on 2012-01-12 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to think and live Christianly in a world of competing worldviews? Christian Contours answers this question by inviting readers to consider the understanding of reality proposed by the Bible. Though it is easy to divide life into separate compartments (religious and secular, theological and practical), faith invites us to view all of life in the light of that Biblical understanding. Presenting a clear, compelling case for unity in essential Christian tenets, the authors of Christian Contours guide the reader through developing, internalizing, and articulating a biblical worldview. This robust worldview enables the Christian to be a critically-thinking participant in culture and to be a faithful disciple of Christ with both heart and mind.
Download or read book Suspicious Minds written by Joel Gold and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2015-07-21 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Truman Show delusion and other strange beliefs"--Cover.
Download or read book The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind written by Jason Weeden and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2014-10-05 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why your political views are more self-serving than you think When it comes to politics, we often perceive our own beliefs as fair and socially beneficial, while seeing opposing views as merely self-serving. But in fact most political views are governed by self-interest, even if we usually don't realize it. Challenging our fiercely held notions about what motivates us politically, this book explores how self-interest divides the public on a host of hot-button issues, from abortion and the legalization of marijuana to same-sex marriage, immigration, affirmative action, and income redistribution. Expanding the notion of interests beyond simple economics, Jason Weeden and Robert Kurzban look at how people's interests clash when it comes to their sex lives, social status, family, and friends. Drawing on a wealth of data, they demonstrate how different groups form distinctive bundles of political positions that often stray far from what we typically think of as liberal or conservative. They show how we engage in unconscious rationalization to justify our political positions, portraying our own views as wise, benevolent, and principled while casting our opponents' views as thoughtless and greedy. While many books on politics seek to provide partisans with new ways to feel good about their own side, The Hidden Agenda of the Political Mind illuminates the hidden drivers of our politics, even if it's a picture neither side will find flattering.
Download or read book Disciplined Minds written by Jeff Schmidt and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2000 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book about the world of professional work, Jeff Schmidt demonstrates that the workplace is inherently political and is a battleground for the very identity of the individual, as is graduate school where professionals are trained.
Download or read book Why Love Matters written by Sue Gerhardt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-24 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why Love Matters explains why loving relationships are essential to brain development in the early years, and how these early interactions can have lasting consequences for future emotional and physical health. This second edition follows on from the success of the first, updating the scientific research, covering recent findings in genetics and the mind/body connection, and including a new chapter highlighting our growing understanding of the part also played by pregnancy in shaping a baby’s future emotional and physical well-being. The author focuses in particular on the wide-ranging effects of early stress on a baby or toddler’s developing nervous system. When things go wrong with relationships in early life, the dependent child has to adapt; what we now know is that his or her brain adapts too. The brain’s emotion and immune systems are particularly affected by early stress and can become less effective. This makes the child more vulnerable to a range of later difficulties such as depression, anti-social behaviour, addictions or anorexia, as well as physical illness.
Download or read book Emotional written by Leonard Mlodinow and published by Pantheon. This book was released on 2022-01-11 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We’ve all been told that thinking rationally is the key to success. But at the cutting edge of science, researchers are discovering that feeling is every bit as important as thinking. You make hundreds of decisions every day, from what to eat for breakfast to how you should invest, and not one of those decisions would be possible without emotion. It has long been said that thinking and feeling are separate and opposing forces in our behavior. But as Leonard Mlodinow, the best-selling author of Subliminal, tells us, extraordinary advances in psychology and neuroscience have proven that emotions are as critical to our well-being as thinking. How can you connect better with others? How can you make sense of your frustration, fear, and anxiety? What can you do to live a happier life? The answers lie in understanding your emotions. Journeying from the labs of pioneering scientists to real-world scenarios that have flirted with disaster, Mlodinow shows us how our emotions can help, why they sometimes hurt, and what we can learn in both instances. Using deep insights into our evolution and biology, Mlodinow gives us the tools to understand our emotions better and to maximize their benefits. Told with his characteristic clarity and fascinating stories, Emotional explores the new science of feelings and offers us an essential guide to making the most of one of nature’s greatest gifts.
Download or read book Perception written by Dennis Proffitt and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2020-07-28 with total page 198 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A groundbreaking popular psychology book that explores the deep connection between our body and our brain. Over decades of study, University of Virginia psychologist Dennis Proffitt has shown that we are each living our own personal version of Gulliver’s Travels, where the size and shape of the things we see are scaled to the size of our bodies, and our ability to interact with them. Stairs look less steep as dieters lose weight, baseballs grow bigger the better players hit, hills look less daunting if you’re standing next to a close friend, and learning happens faster when you can talk with your hands. Written with journalist Drake Baer, Perception marries academic rigor with mainstream accessibility. The research presented and the personalities profiled will show what it means to not only have, but be, your unique human body. The positive ramifications of viewing ourselves from this embodied perspective include greater athletic, academic, and professional achievement, more nourishing relationships, and greater personal well-being. The better we can understand what our bodies are—what they excel at, what they need, what they must avoid—the better we can live our lives.
