Cognitive Philosophy

Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do.

Noam Chomsky is widely known and deeply admired for being the founder of modern linguistics, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science, and perhaps the most avidly read political theorist and commentator of our time. In these lectures, he presents a lifetime of philosophical reflection on all three of these areas of research to which he has contributed for over half a century.

The stuff of conspiracy theories makes for great, entertaining stories in movies, books, and television. And there is no shortage of subjects: from who really killed JFK to the truth behind 9/11. And then, there are subjects from alien invasions to the Moon landing was simulated - theories that are truly out of this world, which according to some, is flat. Many of these crazy concepts have jumped off the pages or screens to become so pervasive in our culture that thousands - even millions - subscribe to them as reality.

What if kids, children, adolescents, teenagers or young people are able to control their anxiety, emotions, depression, worry, anger, panic, trauma, suicidal and negative thoughts effectively - this is where cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) takes effect. Think about the sanity and environmental benefits this will bring to our society. Are you not thrilled? It's not every kid, child, adolescent, teenager or young person who can effectively control their own emotions and behavior. But those who can, are able to take responsibility for their actions, have a good feeling and a tremendous ...

If You Want to Reduce stress, and Increase Joy with The Buddhist philosophy, Then Keep Reading… What is the essence of Buddha’s teachings? What is the difference between awakening and enlightenment? How do I maximize good karma? How can I deal with fear, worry, and depression? How can I make meditation work for me? These are just some of the burning questions that most people often ask when it comes to Buddhism. In a nutshell, Buddhism is all about living a more peaceful, mindful, and satisfying life. However, despite its popularity, Buddhism is still misunderstood by the public. In ...

Kids are naturally curious, but when it comes to school it seems like their minds are turned off. Why is it that they can remember the smallest details from their favorite television programs, yet miss the most obvious questions on their history test? Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has focused his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning and has a deep understanding of the daily challenges faced by classroom teachers.

Over the past few years, Brianna Wiest has gained renown for her deeply moving, philosophical writing. This new compilation of her published work features pieces on why you should pursue purpose over passion, embrace negative thinking, see the wisdom in daily routine, and become aware of the cognitive biases that are creating the way you see your life. Some of these pieces have never been seen; others have been read by millions of people around the world. Regardless, each will leave you thinking: This idea changed my life.

Whenever we worry about what to eat, how to love, or simply how to be happy, we are worrying about how to lead a good life. No goal is more elusive. In How to Be a Stoic, philosopher Massimo Pigliucci offers Stoicism, the ancient philosophy that inspired the great emperor Marcus Aurelius, as the best way to attain it. Stoicism is a pragmatic philosophy that teaches us to act depending on what is within our control and separate things worth getting upset about from those that are not.

I drop walnuts on roads to crack them open. Wheels are tools when you are too small; timing is a muscle; memory smells like your hand. If I could speak, I would not recite facts. I would hand you a broken shell and watch whether you understood why. This book is that hand—close, blunt, and exact. It follows the small acts that add up to a mind: the walnut, the wait, the face remembered across seasons, the dusk meeting where a thousand silent signals sort friend from threat. Read me if you want a map of cognition that never learned words. You will find tool-use stripped of wonder and recast...

This book takes a novel view of mathematics, arguing that it is a branch of human language. Looking through this lens, it traces the evolution of math from the first tally sticks, through the invention of number systems, up to modern computer science. Along the way it shows that, like all language, the real key to math is human intuition. This book has something for everybody: math-phobes hoping to come to terms with an intimidating subject, mathematicians looking for insight into their trade, educators trying to make math accessible, and laymen who want to understand the role of numbers in...

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." That warning holds double for me. I live in twilight and vibration, not your sentences: body pressed into grass, ears narrowing to a mouse's heartbeat, whiskers reading the gap before my paws. I am not a metaphor. I am a predator with a grammar of light, air, and scent—practical, urgent, and all of it felt. If a cat could teach you anything, it wouldn't teach kindness. It would teach attention. This book moves through the instruments of that attention—twilight sight, ears of silk, whiskers as touch-lidar, layered scent-maps, purrs and...

Why Don't Students Like School? (2nd Edition) features 25 percent updated material while still honoring the classic, beloved approaches of the original. The second edition will help teachers improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn and reveals the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building knowledge and creating lasting learning experiences.

At least since the time Buddha's teachings reached humanity, people have sought their ideas of 'enlightenment'. Many are enticed by the concept and there is no shortage of ideas about what this enlightenment really is or what it brings to us if we find it. This book seeks to explain it in a different, more cohesive vein of understanding so the concept is no longer vague and amorphous. We find our world is in a state of chaotic upheaval and are discovering that the reality we thought existed is being exposed for the illusion we have all lived with as our reality. Much of humanity chooses to ...

An "elegant", "engrossing" (Carol Tavris, Wall Street Journal) examination of what we think we know about the brain and why - despite technological advances - the workings of our most essential organ remain a mystery.

"If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." So listen instead to what does speak: the ant under your shoe, writing life in scent. I lay a trail that reads like a sentence, press my antennae to a sister for grammar, taste sugar and grit as punctuation. I do not speak; I broadcast maps, alarms, and care with chemicals and touch. In plain, unsentimental scenes I narrate how a single path becomes a mind — how food, brood, and danger are solved by bodies obeying small rules until they look like decisions. This is natural history pried open at the seam where science meets sensation. ...

What if everything orthodox psychology understands about selfhood is built on a critical epistemological illusion? In a challenge to Freud, the father of psychoanalysis, and Kohut, the architect of Self Psychology, this multidisciplinary research argues that the ego—therapy’s dogmatic mediator—is not the reality tester, but the delusion maker. The ego is a pathological artifact of mirroring. Grounded in the lived reality of Panmodal Aphantasia (absence of mental representations across all modalities), this book proves that the self emerges even without reflection, autopoietically—...

A new edition of a classic work that originated the "embodied cognition" movement and was one of the first to link science and Buddhist practices.

Escucha ahora Nada es tan terrible, el nuevo libro de Rafael Santandreu. Un manual de autoterapia basado en la psicología cognitiva, la escuela terapéutica más eficaz y científica. El audiolibro de Nada es tan terrible contiene las herramientas de los mejores psicólogos del mundo para: dejar de preocuparse, disfrutar más intensamente de la vida, y más.

We live in a gendered world, where we are ceaselessly bombarded by messages about sex and gender. On a daily basis, we face deeply ingrained beliefs that sex determines our skills and preferences, from toys and colors to career choice and salaries. But what does this constant gendering mean for our thoughts, decisions, and behavior? And what does it mean for our brains? Drawing on her work as a professor of cognitive neuroimaging, Gina Rippon unpacks the stereotypes that surround us from our earliest moments and shows how these messages mold our ideas of ourselves.

Coppedge conceived dimensional phenomenology to be the ‘fourth dimension of dimensionism.’ The themes introduced cross boundaries between philosophy and psychology, spirituality and the life sciences, with a focus on what is most vitally important to experience: what we need to understand, how we feel, and in what ways we go about understanding and emoting. Coppedge addresses such themes as emotional meaning, intuitionism, existential mereology, and material semantics in this striking and colorful work, always with a view towards the methods and perceptions which are most exemplary of ...