"Why is life worth living? What makes actions right or wrong? What is reality and how do we know it? The Brain and the Meaning of Life draws on research in philosophy, psychology, and neuroscience to answer some of the most pressing questions about life's nature and value. Paul Thagard argues that evidence requires the abandonment of many traditional ideas about the soul, free will, and immortality, and shows how brain science matters for fundamental...

"Cognitive science arose in the 1950s when it became apparent that a number of disciplines, including psychology, computer science, linguistics, and philosophy, were fragmenting. Perhaps owing to the field’s immediate origins in cybernetics, as well as to the foundational assumption that cognition is information processing, cognitive science initially seemed more unified than psychology. However, as a result of differing interpretations of the foundational...

"'Those who ask whether mental processes can extend beyond the brain and into the world may seem to be asking where is my mind?' Mark Rowlands instead replaces questions about the location of cognition with a process-based vision of the mind as a complex set of activities distributed across brain, body, and world. His integrative and original book demonstrates that the cognitive sciences already treat mental processes as amalgamations of disparate...