Mind in Motion

Mind in Motion

Author: Barbara Tversky

Publisher: Basic Books

Published: 2019-05-21

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0465093078

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An eminent psychologist offers a major new theory of human cognition: movement, not language, is the foundation of thought When we try to think about how we think, we can't help but think of words. Indeed, some have called language the stuff of thought. But pictures are remembered far better than words, and describing faces, scenes, and events defies words. Anytime you take a shortcut or play chess or basketball or rearrange your furniture in your mind, you've done something remarkable: abstract thinking without words. In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas. Spatial thinking even underlies the structure and meaning of language: why we say we push ideas forward or tear them apart, why we're feeling up or have grown far apart. Like Thinking, Fast and Slow before it, Mind in Motion gives us a new way to think about how--and where--thinking takes place.


Book Synopsis Mind in Motion by : Barbara Tversky

Download or read book Mind in Motion written by Barbara Tversky and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2019-05-21 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An eminent psychologist offers a major new theory of human cognition: movement, not language, is the foundation of thought When we try to think about how we think, we can't help but think of words. Indeed, some have called language the stuff of thought. But pictures are remembered far better than words, and describing faces, scenes, and events defies words. Anytime you take a shortcut or play chess or basketball or rearrange your furniture in your mind, you've done something remarkable: abstract thinking without words. In Mind in Motion, psychologist Barbara Tversky shows that spatial cognition isn't just a peripheral aspect of thought, but its very foundation, enabling us to draw meaning from our bodies and their actions in the world. Our actions in real space get turned into mental actions on thought, often spouting spontaneously from our bodies as gestures. Spatial thinking underlies creating and using maps, assembling furniture, devising football strategies, designing airports, understanding the flow of people, traffic, water, and ideas. Spatial thinking even underlies the structure and meaning of language: why we say we push ideas forward or tear them apart, why we're feeling up or have grown far apart. Like Thinking, Fast and Slow before it, Mind in Motion gives us a new way to think about how--and where--thinking takes place.

Mind As Action

Mind As Action

Author: James V. Wertsch

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1998-01-08

Total Pages: 216

ISBN-13: 0199761566

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Contemporary social problems typically involve many complex, interrelated dimensions--psychological, cultural, and institutional, among others. But today, the social sciences have fragmented into isolated disciplines lacking a common language, and analyses of social problems have polarized into approaches that focus on an individual's mental functioning over social settings, or vice versa. In Mind as Action, James V. Wertsch argues that current approaches to social issues have been blinded by the narrow confines of increasing specialization in the social sciences. In response to this conceptual blindness, he proposes a method of sociocultural analysis that connects the various perspectives of the social sciences in an integrated, nonreductive fashion. Wertsch maintains that we can use mediated action, which he defines as the irreducible tension between active agents and cultural tools, as a productive method of explicating the complicated relationships between human action and its manifold cultural, institutional, and historical contexts. Drawing on the ideas of Lev Vygotsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Kenneth Burke, as well as research from various fields, this book traces the implications of mediated action for a sociocultural analysis of the mind, as well as for some of today's most pressing social issues. Wertsch's investigation of forms of mediated action such as stereotypes and historical narratives provide valuable new insights into issues such as the mastery, appropriation, and resistance of culture. By providing an analytic unit that has the possibility of operating at the crossroads of various disciplines, Mind as Action will be important reading for academics, students, and researchers in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, sociology, literary analysis, and philosophy.


Book Synopsis Mind As Action by : James V. Wertsch

Download or read book Mind As Action written by James V. Wertsch and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1998-01-08 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary social problems typically involve many complex, interrelated dimensions--psychological, cultural, and institutional, among others. But today, the social sciences have fragmented into isolated disciplines lacking a common language, and analyses of social problems have polarized into approaches that focus on an individual's mental functioning over social settings, or vice versa. In Mind as Action, James V. Wertsch argues that current approaches to social issues have been blinded by the narrow confines of increasing specialization in the social sciences. In response to this conceptual blindness, he proposes a method of sociocultural analysis that connects the various perspectives of the social sciences in an integrated, nonreductive fashion. Wertsch maintains that we can use mediated action, which he defines as the irreducible tension between active agents and cultural tools, as a productive method of explicating the complicated relationships between human action and its manifold cultural, institutional, and historical contexts. Drawing on the ideas of Lev Vygotsky, Mikhail Bakhtin, and Kenneth Burke, as well as research from various fields, this book traces the implications of mediated action for a sociocultural analysis of the mind, as well as for some of today's most pressing social issues. Wertsch's investigation of forms of mediated action such as stereotypes and historical narratives provide valuable new insights into issues such as the mastery, appropriation, and resistance of culture. By providing an analytic unit that has the possibility of operating at the crossroads of various disciplines, Mind as Action will be important reading for academics, students, and researchers in psychology, linguistics, cognitive science, sociology, literary analysis, and philosophy.

The Mind in Action

The Mind in Action

Author: Alan Garnham

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 1991

Total Pages: 125

ISBN-13: 9780415008495

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Book Synopsis The Mind in Action by : Alan Garnham

Download or read book The Mind in Action written by Alan Garnham and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 1991 with total page 125 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Action, Mind, and Brain

Action, Mind, and Brain

Author: David A. Rosenbaum

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-02-08

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0262368730

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An engaging and accessible introduction to the psychology and neuroscience of physical action. This engaging and accessible book offers the first introductory text on the psychology and neuroscience of physical action. Written by a leading researcher in the field, it covers the interplay of action, mind, and brain, showing that many core concepts in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and technology grew out of questions about the control of everyday physical actions. It explains action not as a “one-way street from stimuli to response” but as a continual perception-action cycle. The informal writing style invites students to think through the evidence step by step, helping them develop general thinking stills as well as learn specific facts. Special emphasis is placed on the role of underrepresented groups. The book discusses the intellectual background of the field, from Plato to Kant, Dewey, and others; applications and methods; and the physical substrates of action—bones, tendons, ligaments, muscles, and nerves. It considers the control of actions in space; learning, and the roles of nature and nurture; feedback; feedforward, or anticipated feedback; and degrees of freedom—the multiple ways of getting things done and three methods for narrowing the alternatives. The book is generously illustrated, including many images of thinkers who contributed to the field.


Book Synopsis Action, Mind, and Brain by : David A. Rosenbaum

Download or read book Action, Mind, and Brain written by David A. Rosenbaum and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2022-02-08 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An engaging and accessible introduction to the psychology and neuroscience of physical action. This engaging and accessible book offers the first introductory text on the psychology and neuroscience of physical action. Written by a leading researcher in the field, it covers the interplay of action, mind, and brain, showing that many core concepts in philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and technology grew out of questions about the control of everyday physical actions. It explains action not as a “one-way street from stimuli to response” but as a continual perception-action cycle. The informal writing style invites students to think through the evidence step by step, helping them develop general thinking stills as well as learn specific facts. Special emphasis is placed on the role of underrepresented groups. The book discusses the intellectual background of the field, from Plato to Kant, Dewey, and others; applications and methods; and the physical substrates of action—bones, tendons, ligaments, muscles, and nerves. It considers the control of actions in space; learning, and the roles of nature and nurture; feedback; feedforward, or anticipated feedback; and degrees of freedom—the multiple ways of getting things done and three methods for narrowing the alternatives. The book is generously illustrated, including many images of thinkers who contributed to the field.

The Law of Mind in Action

The Law of Mind in Action

Author: Fenwicke Lindsay Holmes

Publisher:

Published: 1919

Total Pages: 242

ISBN-13:

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Book Synopsis The Law of Mind in Action by : Fenwicke Lindsay Holmes

Download or read book The Law of Mind in Action written by Fenwicke Lindsay Holmes and published by . This book was released on 1919 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Thought in Action

Thought in Action

Author: Barbara Gail Montero

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 303

ISBN-13: 0199596778

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How does thinking affect doing? It is widely held that thinking about what you are doing, as you are doing it, hinders performance. But is this true? Barbara Gail Montero explores real-life examples and draws on psychology, neuroscience, and literature to develop a theory of expertise that emphasizes the role of the conscious mind in expert action.


Book Synopsis Thought in Action by : Barbara Gail Montero

Download or read book Thought in Action written by Barbara Gail Montero and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 303 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How does thinking affect doing? It is widely held that thinking about what you are doing, as you are doing it, hinders performance. But is this true? Barbara Gail Montero explores real-life examples and draws on psychology, neuroscience, and literature to develop a theory of expertise that emphasizes the role of the conscious mind in expert action.

Mind in Action

Mind in Action

Author: Pentti Määttänen

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2015-04-11

Total Pages: 102

ISBN-13: 3319176234

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The book questions two key dichotomies: that of the apparent and real, and that of the internal and external. This leads to revised notions of the structure of experience and the object of knowledge. Our world is experienced as possibilities of action, and to know is to know what to do. A further consequence is that the mind is best considered as a property of organisms’ interactions with their environment. The unit of analysis is the loop of action and perception, and the central concept is the notion of habit of action, which provides the embodied basis of cognition as the anticipation of action. This holds for non-linguistic tacit meanings as well as for linguistic meanings. Habit of action is a teleological notion and thus opens a possibility for defining intentionality and normativity in terms of the soft naturalism adopted in the book. The mind is embodied, and this embodiment determines our physical perspective on the world. Our sensory organs and other instruments give us instrumental access to the world, and this access is epistemic in character. The distinction between the physical and conceptual viewpoint allows us to define truth as the correspondence with operational fit. This embodied epistemic truth is however not a sign of antirealism, as the instrumentally accessed theoretical objects are precisely those objects that experimental science deals with.


Book Synopsis Mind in Action by : Pentti Määttänen

Download or read book Mind in Action written by Pentti Määttänen and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-04-11 with total page 102 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book questions two key dichotomies: that of the apparent and real, and that of the internal and external. This leads to revised notions of the structure of experience and the object of knowledge. Our world is experienced as possibilities of action, and to know is to know what to do. A further consequence is that the mind is best considered as a property of organisms’ interactions with their environment. The unit of analysis is the loop of action and perception, and the central concept is the notion of habit of action, which provides the embodied basis of cognition as the anticipation of action. This holds for non-linguistic tacit meanings as well as for linguistic meanings. Habit of action is a teleological notion and thus opens a possibility for defining intentionality and normativity in terms of the soft naturalism adopted in the book. The mind is embodied, and this embodiment determines our physical perspective on the world. Our sensory organs and other instruments give us instrumental access to the world, and this access is epistemic in character. The distinction between the physical and conceptual viewpoint allows us to define truth as the correspondence with operational fit. This embodied epistemic truth is however not a sign of antirealism, as the instrumentally accessed theoretical objects are precisely those objects that experimental science deals with.

The Mind in Action

The Mind in Action

Author: Eric Berne

Publisher: Grigson Press

Published: 2011-09-01

Total Pages: 338

ISBN-13: 9781447425731

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Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.


Book Synopsis The Mind in Action by : Eric Berne

Download or read book The Mind in Action written by Eric Berne and published by Grigson Press. This book was released on 2011-09-01 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

Supersizing the Mind

Supersizing the Mind

Author: Andy Clark

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-12-31

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0199831041

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When historian Charles Weiner found pages of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman's notes, he saw it as a "record" of Feynman's work. Feynman himself, however, insisted that the notes were not a record but the work itself. In Supersizing the Mind, Andy Clark argues that our thinking doesn't happen only in our heads but that "certain forms of human cognizing include inextricable tangles of feedback, feed-forward and feed-around loops: loops that promiscuously criss-cross the boundaries of brain, body and world." The pen and paper of Feynman's thought are just such feedback loops, physical machinery that shape the flow of thought and enlarge the boundaries of mind. Drawing upon recent work in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, human-computer systems, and beyond, Supersizing the Mind offers both a tour of the emerging cognitive landscape and a sustained argument in favor of a conception of mind that is extended rather than "brain-bound." The importance of this new perspective is profound. If our minds themselves can include aspects of our social and physical environments, then the kinds of social and physical environments we create can reconfigure our minds and our capacity for thought and reason.


Book Synopsis Supersizing the Mind by : Andy Clark

Download or read book Supersizing the Mind written by Andy Clark and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-12-31 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: When historian Charles Weiner found pages of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman's notes, he saw it as a "record" of Feynman's work. Feynman himself, however, insisted that the notes were not a record but the work itself. In Supersizing the Mind, Andy Clark argues that our thinking doesn't happen only in our heads but that "certain forms of human cognizing include inextricable tangles of feedback, feed-forward and feed-around loops: loops that promiscuously criss-cross the boundaries of brain, body and world." The pen and paper of Feynman's thought are just such feedback loops, physical machinery that shape the flow of thought and enlarge the boundaries of mind. Drawing upon recent work in psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, artificial intelligence, robotics, human-computer systems, and beyond, Supersizing the Mind offers both a tour of the emerging cognitive landscape and a sustained argument in favor of a conception of mind that is extended rather than "brain-bound." The importance of this new perspective is profound. If our minds themselves can include aspects of our social and physical environments, then the kinds of social and physical environments we create can reconfigure our minds and our capacity for thought and reason.

Action in Perception

Action in Perception

Author: Alva Noë

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2006-01-20

Total Pages: 291

ISBN-13: 0262640635

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"Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us," writes Alva Noë. "It is something we do." In Action in Perception, Noë argues that perception and perceptual consciousness depend on capacities for action and thought—that perception is a kind of thoughtful activity. Touch, not vision, should be our model for perception. Perception is not a process in the brain, but a kind of skillful activity of the body as a whole. We enact our perceptual experience. To perceive, according to this enactive approach to perception, is not merely to have sensations; it is to have sensations that we understand. In Action in Perception, Noë investigates the forms this understanding can take. He begins by arguing, on both phenomenological and empirical grounds, that the content of perception is not like the content of a picture; the world is not given to consciousness all at once but is gained gradually by active inquiry and exploration. Noë then argues that perceptual experience acquires content thanks to our possession and exercise of practical bodily knowledge, and examines, among other topics, the problems posed by spatial content and the experience of color. He considers the perspectival aspect of the representational content of experience and assesses the place of thought and understanding in experience. Finally, he explores the implications of the enactive approach for our understanding of the neuroscience of perception.


Book Synopsis Action in Perception by : Alva Noë

Download or read book Action in Perception written by Alva Noë and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2006-01-20 with total page 291 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Perception is not something that happens to us, or in us," writes Alva Noë. "It is something we do." In Action in Perception, Noë argues that perception and perceptual consciousness depend on capacities for action and thought—that perception is a kind of thoughtful activity. Touch, not vision, should be our model for perception. Perception is not a process in the brain, but a kind of skillful activity of the body as a whole. We enact our perceptual experience. To perceive, according to this enactive approach to perception, is not merely to have sensations; it is to have sensations that we understand. In Action in Perception, Noë investigates the forms this understanding can take. He begins by arguing, on both phenomenological and empirical grounds, that the content of perception is not like the content of a picture; the world is not given to consciousness all at once but is gained gradually by active inquiry and exploration. Noë then argues that perceptual experience acquires content thanks to our possession and exercise of practical bodily knowledge, and examines, among other topics, the problems posed by spatial content and the experience of color. He considers the perspectival aspect of the representational content of experience and assesses the place of thought and understanding in experience. Finally, he explores the implications of the enactive approach for our understanding of the neuroscience of perception.