Updated web links and expanded appendices provide cutting edge information on action research along with new case studies and examples.

    Here, Robert Solomon and Kathleen Higgins tell the story of philosophy's development with great clarity and refreshing wit. The authors begin with the most ancient religious beliefs of the east and west and bring us right up to the feminist and multicultural philosophies of the present. Along the way, they highlight major philosophers, from Plato and the Buddha to William James and Simone de Beauvoir, and explore major categories, from metaphysics and ethics to politics and logic. The book is enlivened as well by telling anecdotes and sparkling quotations. Among many memorable observations, we're treated to Thomas Hobbes' assessment that life is nasty, brutish, and short and Hegel's description of Napoleon as world history on horseback. Engaging, comprehensive, and delightfully written, A Passion for Wisdom is a splendid introduction to an intellectual tradition that reaches back over three thousand years.

    From the woman suffering from "painful foot and moving toe syndrome" to the Indiana farmer who contacted a variant of mad cow disease from his herds of livestock, Klawans deduced a great deal from his patients, not only about the immediate causes of their ailments, but about the evolutionary underpinnings of their behavior.

    With Mind, Paul Thagard offers an introduction to this interdisciplinary field for readers who come to the subject with very different backgrounds. It is suitable for classroom use by students with interests ranging from computer science and engineering to psychology and philosophy.Thagard's systematic descriptions and evaluations of the main theories of mental representation advanced by cognitive scientists allow students to see that there are many complementary approaches to the investigation of mind. The fundamental theoretical perspectives he describes include logic, rules, concepts, analogies, images, and connections (artificial neural networks). The discussion of these theories provides an integrated view of the different achievements of the various fields of cognitive science.This second edition includes substantial revision and new material. Part I, which presents the different theoretical approaches, has been updated in light of recent work the field. Part II, which treats extensions to cognitive science, has been thoroughly revised, with new chapters added on brains, emotions, and consciousness. Other additions include a list of relevant Web sites at the end of each chapter and a glossary at the end of the book. As in the first edition, each chapter concludes with a summary and suggestions for further reading.

    But it has never held a more important place than it does today, with both traditional problems and new topics often sparked by the developments in the psychological, cognitive, and computer sciences. Jaegwon Kim's Philosophy of Mind is the classic, comprehensive survey of the subject. Now in its second edition, Kim explores, maps, and interprets this complex and exciting terrain. Designed as an introduction to the field for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students, Philosophy of Mind focuses on the mind/body problem and related issues, some touching on the status of psychology and cognitive science. The second edition features a new chapter on Cartesian substance dualism-a perspective that has been little discussed in the mainstream philosophy of mind and almost entirely ignored in most introductory books in philosophy of mind. In addition, all the chapters have been revised and updated to reflect the trends and developments of the last decade. Throughout the text, Kim allows readers to come to their own terms with the central problems of the mind. At the same time, the author's own emerging views are on display and serve to move the discussion forward. Comprehensive, clear, and fair, Philosophy of Mind is a model of philosophical exposition. It is a major contribution to the study and teaching of the philosophy of mind.

    Emergent areas of study like emotion, morality, and judgment are included throughout the text to give students the most accurate and contemporary picture of the field. To emphasize the relevance of social psychology in everyday life, the Second Edition includes a capstone chapter on applications, which focuses on topics like personal finance, education, and health. Throughout the text, an illustration program engages students in the scientific process, with You Be the Subject activities and Scientific Method figures.

    Why should the light turn on, so to speak, in human beings at all? And how is the electrical storm of neurons under our skull connected with our consciousness? Is the self only our brain's user interface, a kind of stage on which a show is performed that we cannot freely direct? In this book, philosopher Markus Gabriel challenges an increasing trend in the sciences towards neurocentrism, a notion which rests on the assumption that the self is identical to the brain. Gabriel raises serious doubts as to whether we can know ourselves in this way. In a sharp critique of this approach, he presents a new defense of the free will and provides a timely introduction to philosophical thought about the self ? all with verve, humor, and surprising insights. Gabriel criticizes the scientific image of the world and takes us on an eclectic journey of self-reflection by way of such concepts as self, consciousness, and freedom, with the aid of Kant, Schopenhauer, and Nagel but also Doctor Who, The Walking Dead, and Fargo.

    They are vehicles, a series of hypothetical, self-operating machines that exhibit increasingly intricate if not always successful or civilized behavior. Each of the vehicles in the series incorporates the essential features of all the earlier models and along the way they come to embody aggression, love, logic, manifestations of foresight, concept formation, creative thinking, personality, and free will. In a section of extensive biological notes, Braitenberg locates many elements of his fantasy in current brain research.

    Each chapter of An Introduction to Brain and Behavior explores a specific question asked by working neuroscientists and students (i.e. "Why do we have a brain?"  "How is the nervous system organized?").  This approach brings coherence to a vast subject, and helps students understand what information is important as their study of brain and behavior progresses chapter to chapter.

    Intrigued, Laing engaged another Glaswegian, Dr. Aaron Esterson, in an intensive phenomenological study of more than 100 families of diagnosed schizophrenics in the London area. In 1962, Laing travelled to meet Bateson and his co-workers in Palo Alto (and elsewhere across the U.S.A.) In 1964, Laing and Esterson published the results of their study in a brilliant and deeply disturbing book, Sanity, Madness & The Family, which John Bowlby described as the most important book about families in the 20th century.

    To meet it, you need a fully integrated text and supplements package that sets the stage for a perfectly choreographed learning experience.

    Converging findings from a variety of disciplines are leading to the emergence of a fundamentally new view of the human mind, and with it a new framework for the behavioral and social sciences. First, with the advent of the cognitive revolution, human nature can finally be defined precisely as the set of universal, species-typical information-processing programs that operate beneath the surface of expressed cultural variability. Second, this collection of cognitive programs evolved in the Pleistocene to solve the adaptive problems regularly faced by our hunter-gatherer ancestors--problems such as mate selection, language acquisition, cooperation, and sexual infidelity. Consequently, the traditional view of the mind as a general-purpose computer, tabula rasa, or passive recipient of culture is being replaced by the view that the mind resembles an intricate network of functionally specialized computers, each of which imposes contentful structure on human mental organization and culture. The Adapted Mind explores this new approach--evolutionary psychology--and its implications for a new view of culture.

    While some marvel at these changes, envisioning consciousness downloaded into a computer or humans "beamed" Star Trek-style, others view them with horror, seeing monsters brooding in the machines. In How We Became Posthuman, N. Katherine Hayles separates hype from fact, investigating the fate of embodiment in an information age.Hayles relates three interwoven stories: how information lost its body, that is, how it came to be conceptualized as an entity separate from the material forms that carry it; the cultural and technological construction of the cyborg; and the dismantling of the liberal humanist "subject" in cybernetic discourse, along with the emergence of the "posthuman."Ranging widely across the history of technology, cultural studies, and literary criticism, Hayles shows what had to be erased, forgotten, and elided to conceive of information as a disembodied entity. Thus she moves from the post-World War II Macy Conferences on cybernetics to the 1952 novel Limbo by cybernetics aficionado Bernard Wolfe; from the concept of self-making to Philip K. Dick's literary explorations of hallucination and reality; and from artificial life to postmodern novels exploring the implications of seeing humans as cybernetic systems.Although becoming posthuman can be nightmarish, Hayles shows how it can also be liberating. From the birth of cybernetics to artificial life, How We Became Posthuman provides an indispensable account of how we arrived in our virtual age, and of where we might go from here.

    Indeed, it is now possible to explore consciousness—the very center of human concern—by scientific means. In this illuminating book, Dr. Gerald M. Edelman offers a new theory of knowledge based on striking scientific findings about how the brain works. And he addresses the related compelling question: Does the latest research imply that all knowledge can be reduced to scientific description?Edelman’s brain-based approach to knowledge has rich implications for our understanding of creativity, of the normal and abnormal functioning of the brain, and of the connections among the different ways we have of knowing. While the gulf between science and the humanities and their respective views of the world has seemed enormous in the past, the author shows that their differences can be dissolved by considering their origins in brain functions. He foresees a day when brain-based devices will be conscious, and he reflects on this and other fascinating ideas about how we come to know the world and ourselves.

    Fearlessly pondering life’s end, Holloway examines how doubts too often paralyze people. He explains, “A sentence is not finished till it has a full stop, and every life needs a dying to complete it … Our brief finitude is but a beautiful spark in the vast darkness of space. So we should live the fleeting day with passion and, when the night comes, depart from it with grace.” Written in the context of organized religion’s structural difficulties, Looking in the Distance is a highly personal and meditative work that helps us better understand the myriad ways in which the human search for wholeness and healing can be approached. Accessible, funny, inquisitive and ever hopeful, it will inspire all who read it.