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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... Thought 104 3.6 Concluding Remarks, including Evolution of Language Again 107 Chapter 4 Shaking Hands and Making Co¤ee: The Structure of Complex Actions 111 4.1 Introduction 111 4.2 Shaking Hands 113 4.3 Making Co¤ee 123 4.4 Building ...
... thought it would be fun to o¤er a fairly wide-ranging series of lectures in a somewhat speculative vein. And I seem to have succeeded: the audiences at the lectures were warm and engaged, and I was delighted with the lively and useful ...
... thought, and awareness. Chapter 4 was something of a surprise to me. Since topics such as intention, obligation, and social norms, to be studied in the rest of the book, are conditions not on beliefs but on actions, I felt it would be ...
... thought vs. ... Dimension 4 (''Horizontal'' division; applies to all ''vertical'' capacities) Data structures (mental structures) vs. Processing capacities Working memory vs. Long-term memory vs. Attention vs. Learning 1.2 Mental ...
... thought that language was perfectly transparent and hardly complex at all (and many nonlinguists, even some in psychology and neuroscience, still think so). Since then we have learned that not only is language far more complex than we ...