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The Computer and the Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science (Fontana Masterguides)

Self-Help

Johnson-Laird, P.N.

Personal Transformation

Fontana

Mental Models

Mental Models offers nothing less than a unified theory of the major properties of mind: comprehension, inference, and consciousness. In spirited and graceful prose, Johnson-Laird argues that we apprehend the world by building inner mental replicas of the relations among objects and events that concern us. The mind is essentially a model-building device that can itself be modeled on a digital computer. This book provides both a blueprint for building such a model and numerous important illustrations of how to do it.  In several key areas of cognition, Johnson-Laird shows how an explanation based on mental modeling is clearly superior to previous theory. For example, he argues compellingly that deductive reasoning does not take place by tacitly applying the rules of logic, but by mentally manipulating models of the states of affairs from which inferences are drawn. Similarly, linguistic comprehension is best understood not as a matter of applying inference rules to propositions derived from sentences, but rather as the mind's effort to construct and update a model of the situation described by a text or a discourse. Most provocative, perhaps, is Johnson-Laird's theory of consciousness: the mind's necessarily incomplete model of itself allows only a partial control over the many unconscious and parallel processes of cognition.  This an extraordinarily rich book, providing a coherent account of much recent experimental work in cognitive psychology, along with lucid explanations of relevant theory in linguistics, computer science, and philosophy Not since Miller, Galanter, and Pribram's classic Plans and the Structure of Behavior has a book in cognitive science combined such sweep, style, and good sense. Like its distinguished predecessor, Mental Models may well serve to fix a point of view for a generation.

Science & Math

Behavioral Sciences

Cambridge University Press

Deduction (Essays in Cognitive Psychology)

<p>How do people make deductions? The orthodox answer to the question is that deductive reasoning depends on a mental logic containing formal rules of inference. The authors of this book have spent several years investigating the process. They repudiate the orthodox theory. They argue instead that people reason by imagining the relevant state of affairs, i.e. building an internal model of it, formulating a tentative conclusion based on this model, and then searching for alternative models that might refute the conclusion. Formal rules work syntactically; mental rules work semantically. The two theories therefore make different predictions about the difficulty of deductions. The book reports the results of experiments that compared these predictions in the three main domains of deduction: propositional reasoning based on connectives such as "if" and "or"; relational reasoning based on spatial descriptions; and complex reasoning based on quantifiers such as "all" and "none". In each domain, the results corroborated the model theory and ran counter to the use of formal rules.<br>The authors relate their findings to problems in artificial intelligence, linguistics and anthropology. They describe various computer programs based on the model theory, including one that solves a major problem in the design of electronic circuits. Finally, they show how the theory resolves a long standing controversy about the nature of rationality and whether there are cognitive universals common to all human cultures.</p>

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Byrne, R.M.J.

Mental Health

Psychology Press

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Books by Johnson-Laird, P.N.