Are we now in a position to give a "final accounting" of Freud's work? Before answering, I should say what this means, or rather what I mean. If we mean a verdict that is certain, in the sense that it could not possibly be overturned by new  ...

In exploring the nature of psychological explanation, this book looks at how psychologists theorize about the human ability to calculate, to speak a language and the like. It shows how good theorizing explains or tries to explain such abilities as perception and cognition. It recasts the familiar explanations of "intelligence" and "cognitive capacity" as put forward by philosophers such as Fodor, Dennett, and others in terms of a theory of explanation that makes established doctrine more intelligible to professionals and their (...) students.In particular, the book shows that vestigial adherence to the positivists' D-N model has distorted the view of philosophers of science about what psychologists (and biologists) do and has masked the real nature of explanation. Major sections in the book cover Analysis and Subsumption; Functional Analysis; Understanding Cognitive Capacities; and Historical Reflections.Robert Cummins is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Illinois, Chicago Circle. A Bradford Book. (shrink)

The Idea of History is the best-known book of the great Oxford philosopher, historian, and archaeologist R.G. Collingwood. It was originally published posthumously in 1946, having been mainly reconstructed from Collingwood's manuscripts, many of which are now lost. For this revised edition, Collingwood's most important lectures on the philosophy of history are published here for the first time. These texts have been prepared by Jan van der Dussen from manuscripts that have only recently become available. The lectures contain Collingwood's first (...) comprehensive statement of his philosophy of history; they are therefore essential for a full understanding of his thought, and in particular for a correct interpretation of The Idea of History itself. Van der Dussen contributes a substantial introduction in which he explains the background to this new edition and surveys the scholarship of the last fifty years. (shrink)

Cavell elaborates the view, traceable from Wittgenstein to Davidson, that there is no thought, and thus no meaning, without language, and shows how this concurs ...

This valuable and interesting book attempts to discern the essential Freudian theses about the mind and to give them a cogent philosophical defense. Like many philosophers Gardner sees psychoanalytic explanation as continuous with folk psychology, though he holds that the latter needs considerable expansion in order to accommodate irrationality of the “Freudian” sorts.

Marshall Edelson identifies the core theory of psychoanalysis and shows how free association and the case study method can provide rational grounds for believing its clinical inferences about the causal role of unconscious sexual fantasies. "Dr. Edelson has committed himself with gusto, persistence and intelligence [to] a spirited defense of psychoanalysis as science—not necessarily as it is, but as it can be in the best of hands as it should be.... It is a defense that I hope can resonate strongly (...) in psychoanalytic ranks. It is also a message that I hope would receive a warm reception in that wider intellectual world where ideas matter and where enlightened social policy and cultural cachet are fostered."—Robert Wallerstein, New York Times Book Review. (shrink)

In this richly detailed analysis, Barbara Von Eckardt lays the foundations for understanding what it means to be a cognitive scientist.

This systematic investigation of computation and mental phenomena by a noted psychologist and computer scientist argues that cognition is a form of computation, that the semantic contents of mental states are encoded in the same general way as computer representations are encoded. It is a rich and sustained investigation of the assumptions underlying the directions cognitive science research is taking. 1 The Explanatory Vocabulary of Cognition 2 The Explanatory Role of Representations 3 The Relevance of Computation 4 The Psychological Reality (...) of Programs: Strong Equivalence 5 Constraining Functional Architecture 6 The Bridge from Physical to Symbolic: Transduction 7 Functional Architecture and Analogue Processes 8 Mental Imagery and Functional Architecture 9 Epilogue: What is Cognitive Science the Science of? (shrink)

In a reconstruction of the theories of Freud and Klein, Sebastian Gardner asks: what causes irrationality, what must the mind be like for it to be irrational, to what extent does irrationality involve self-awareness, and what is the point of irrationality? Arguing that psychoanalytic theory provides the most penetrating answers to these questions, he rejects the widespread view of the unconscious as a 'second mind', in favour of a view of it as a source of inherently irrational desires seeking expression (...) through wish-fulfilment and phantasy. He meets scepticism about psychoanalytic explanation by exhibiting its continuity with everyday psychology. (shrink)

The philosophy of mind and cognition has been transformed by recent advances in what is loosely called cognitive science. This book is a thoroughly up-to-date introduction to and account of that transformation, in which the many strands in contemporary cognitive science are brought together into a coherent philosophical picture of the mind. The book begins with discussions of the pre-history of contemporary philosophy of mind - dualism, behaviourism, and early versions of the identity theory of mind - and moves through (...) discussions of functionalism in autonomy of psychology, to topics such as eliminative materialism, individualism and the problems of content and representation. The synoptic nature of the discussion makes it ideal as the foundation of an undergraduate course in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Freud's account of dreams has a cogent interpretive basis.

Psychoanalysis provides the best explanation of a range of empirical phenomena; epistemic criics do not take this fully into account.