Language, Consciousness, Culture: Essays on Mental StructureMIT Press, 2009 M01 23 - 432 pages An integrative approach to human cognition that encompasses the domains of language, consciousness, action, social cognition, and theory of mind that will foster cross-disciplinary conversation among linguists, philosophers, psycholinguists, neuroscientists, cognitive anthropologists, and evolutionary psychologists. Ray Jackendoff's Language, Consciousness, Culture represents a breakthrough in developing an integrated theory of human cognition. It will be of interest to a broad spectrum of cognitive scientists, including linguists, philosophers, psycholinguists, neuroscientists, cognitive anthropologists, and evolutionary psychologists. Jackendoff argues that linguistics has become isolated from the other cognitive sciences at least partly because of the syntax-based architecture assumed by mainstream generative grammar. He proposes an alternative parallel architecture for the language faculty that permits a greater internal integration of the components of language and connects far more naturally to such larger issues in cognitive neuroscience as language processing, the connection of language to vision, and the evolution of language. Extending this approach beyond the language capacity, Jackendoff proposes sharper criteria for a satisfactory theory of consciousness, examines the structure of complex everyday actions, and investigates the concepts involved in an individual's grasp of society and culture. Each of these domains is used to reflect back on the question of what is unique about human language and what follows from more general properties of the mind. Language, Consciousness, Culture extends Jackendoff's pioneering theory of conceptual semantics to two of the most important domains of human thought: social cognition and theory of mind. Jackendoff's formal framework allows him to draw new connections among a large variety of literatures and to uncover new distinctions and generalizations not previously recognized. The breadth of the approach will foster cross-disciplinary conversation; the vision is to develop a richer understanding of human nature. |
From inside the book
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... Human Behavior, Jon Elster (1999) Knowledge, Possibility, and Consciousness, John Perry (2001) Varieties of Meaning, Ruth Garrett Millikan (2004) Sweet Dreams: Philosophical Obstacles to a Science of Consciousness, Daniel C. Dennett ...
... Trumpets and Drums 359 12.1 Methodology in Studying Social Cognition and Theory of Mind 359 12.2 Theory of Mind and Social Cognition: What's Innate, and What's Special to Humans? 362 References 369 Index 393 Contents xiii.
... human being. In particular, it helps to distinguish social competence per se from such related issues as theory of mind, and to open up the scope of investigation to a far broader range of phenomena, some of which reappear in later ...
... human nature in terms of the mental structures that play a role in constituting human experience and human behavior. In order to explain what I mean by ''mental structure,'' it is useful to situate the term within the more general ...
... human capacity. The rest of cognitive neuroscience has for the most part made do with relatively rudimentary notions of mental structure, exploring more intensely issues of neural localization and/or the ''horizontal'' capacities of ...