Author: Stephen P. Stich
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 9780520029613
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Author: Julia M. Penn
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110818442
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 64

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Author: Kevin J. Mitchell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691204152
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
"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.

Author: Colin McGinn
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262029391
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 148

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Book Description
An argument that nativism is true and important but mysterious, examining the particular case of ideas of sensible qualities. In this book, Colin McGinn presents a concise, clear, and compelling argument that the origins of knowledge are innate—that nativism, not empiricism, is correct in its theory of how concepts are acquired. McGinn considers the particular case of sensible qualities—ideas of color, shape, taste, and so on. He argues that these, which he once regarded as the strongest case for the empiricist position, are in fact not well explained by the empiricist account that they derive from interactions with external objects. Rather, he contends, ideas of sensible qualities offer the strongest case for the nativist position—that a large range of our knowledge is inborn, not acquired through the senses. Yet, McGinn cautions, how this can be is deeply problematic; we have no good theories about how innate knowledge is possible. Innate knowledge is a mystery, though a fact. McGinn describes the traditional debate between empiricism and nativism; offers an array of arguments against empiricism; constructs an argument in favor of nativism; and considers the philosophical consequences of adopting the nativist position, discussing perception, the mind–body problem, the unconscious, metaphysics, and epistemology.

Author: Y. Masih
Publisher: Motilal Banarsidass Publ.
ISBN: 9788120812420
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 606

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Book Description
This is the enlarged edition of a Critical History of Modern Philosophy. In this new edition Greek and Medieval Philosophies have been added. The book also includes a critical and comparative account of the major contributions of eight modern thinkers. To this exposition the idealism of Hegel and Bradley has been introduced. Recent discussions concerning Hume, Kant, Hegel and Bradley have also been incorporated. Whilst giving fully an analytic account of topics, the author maintains that philosophy is a holistic enterprise of man, as we find it in Spinoza, Kant, Hegel and Bradley.The book has turned out to be a reliable and useful to the students of the subject throughout India. This thoroughly revised and enlarged edition will prove to be all the more serviceable in general.

Author: Paul Artin Boghossian
Publisher:
ISBN: 0198851707
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
What kind of knowledge can we get just by thinking? Two of the world's leading philosophers develop radically different positions, in alternating chapters, on the status and nature of a priori knowledge. The reader is able to follow up-close how a philosophical debate evolves.

Author: Marc A. Hight
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271047658
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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Book Description
"A wide-ranging study of the 'way of ideas' and its metaphysics, culminating in a bold reinterpretation of Berkeley."

Author: Philippe Hamou
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192546643
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
This volume presents twelve original essays, by an international team of scholars, on the relation of John Locke's thought to Descartes and to Cartesian philosophers such as Malebranche, Clauberg, and the Port-Royal authors. The essays, preceded by a substantial introduction, cover a large variety of topics from natural philosophy to religion, philosophy of mind and body, metaphysics and epistemology. The volume shows that in Locke's complex relationship to Descartes and Cartesianism, stark opposition and subtle 'family resemblances' are tightly intertwined. Since the turn of the twentieth century, the theory of knowledge has been the main comparative focus. According to an influential historiographical conception, Descartes and Locke form together the spearhead in the 'epistemological turn' of early modern philosophy. In bringing together the contributions to this volume, the editors advocate for a shift of emphasis. A full comparison of Locke's and Descartes's positions should cover not only their theories of knowledge, but also their views on natural philosophy, metaphysics, and religion. Their conflicting claims on issues such as cosmic organization, the qualities and nature of bodies, the substance of the soul, and God's government of the world, are of interest not only in their own right, to take the full measure of Locke's complex relation to Descartes, but also as they allow a better understanding of the continuing epistemological debate between the philosophical heirs of these thinkers.

Author: William Bechtel
Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
ISBN: 9780631218517
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 816

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Book Description
Unmatched in the quality of its world-renowned contributors, this multidisciplinary companion serves as both a course text and a reference book across the broad spectrum of issues of concern to cognitive science.

Author: Steven Pinker
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101200324
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 532

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Book Description
A brilliant inquiry into the origins of human nature from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. "Sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, and fun to read..also highly persuasive." --Time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Updated with a new afterword One of the world's leading experts on language and the mind explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.