The Body in Mind
Understanding Cognitive Processes

This book offers a radical externalist or environmentalist model of cognitive processes.

Mark Rowlands (Author)

9780521049795, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 7 January 2008

284 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.6 cm, 0.378 kg

"The book certainly merits atttention. It brings together some very diverse material, bearing on externalism about the mind, and makes use of it in a distinctive way." Philosophical Review

In this book, Mark Rowlands challenges the Cartesian view of the mind as a self-contained monadic entity, and offers in its place a radical externalist or environmentalist model of cognitive processes. Cognition is not something done exclusively in the head, but fundamentally something done in the world. Drawing on both evolutionary theory and a detailed examination of the processes involved in perception, memory, thought and language use, Rowlands argues that cognition is, in part, a process whereby creatures manipulate and exploit relevant objects in their environment. It is not simply an internal process of information processing; equally significantly, it is an external process of information processing. This innovative book provides a foundation for an unorthodox but increasingly popular view of the nature of cognition.

Preface
1. Introduction: 'a picture held us captive'
Part I. Psychotechtonics: 2. Introduction to part I: 'don't work hard, work smart'
3. Environmentalism and what it is not
4. Environmentalism and evolution
5. Perception
6. Memory
7. Thought
8. Language
Part II. Psychosemantics: 9. Introduction to part II: the need for and the place of a theory of representation
10. Two theories of representation
11. Environmentalism and teleological semantics
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Philosophy of mind [HPM]