Subject collection: Psychology (246 titles, 1978–2015)

The major purpose of newspaper headlines is to trigger the reader’s interest. A popular way to achieve this goal is the use of phraseological modifications. Based on previous findings from various linguistic disciplines, this book provides an interdisciplinary approach to shed light on the reception of substitutions like More than Meats the Eye. It develops an empirical methodology for investigating the complex cognitive processes involved, using a large sample of authentic examples for illustration. Along these lines, this volume not only shows what associations readers make when they encounter a lexical substitution and what factors facilitate the recognition of the canonical form. It also addresses the question of how meaning is constructed in terms of Conceptual Integration Theory and establishes an experimentally supported model of interpretation. This multifaceted perspective renders Phraseological Substitutions in Newspaper Headlines: "More than Meats the Eye" relevant to scholars and advanced students from a wide range of linguistic areas, such as phraseology, cognitive linguistics, psycholinguistics, and humour research, but also to interested journalists.

The predominant positive view among philosophers and scientists alike is that consciousness is something realized in brain activity. This view, however, largely fails to capture what consciousness is like according to how it shows itself to conscious beings. What this work proposes instead is that consciousness is a phenomenon that exists in and throughout the body. Apart from whether or not it involves intentionality and apart from whether or not it involves awareness of the self, consciousness is self-intimating, self-revealing, self-disclosing. Self-disclosure is the definitive phenomenological character of consciousness in all its forms. Taking this stance as a point of departure, the book presents a specific account of what bodily field phenomenon consciousness is. In this way, the current stalemate in philosophy over the question of the physical reality of consciousness is broken. Series A

Synthesizing ideas from event semantics and psycholinguistics, this monograph provides a new perspective on the processing of linguistic aspect and aspectual coercion. Confronting alternative semantic accounts with experimental evidence, the author develops a comprehensive model of online aspectual interpretation. The first part of the book critically reviews competing theoretical accounts of aspectual coercion. As an analytical tool the author introduces a computational model based on the event calculus by Hamm & van Lambalgen (2005) which makes use of planning formalisms from artificial intelligence. Detailed predictions from this framework are then tested in the experimental work reported in the second part. The focus here is on such questions as: Is aspectual coercion a uniform phenomenon or must we distinguish different types? Is aspect processed incrementally or is it computed only at the clause boundary? And finally, what insights can event related potentials yield about how the brain resolves local aspectual mismatch?

The study of colour attracts researchers from a wide range of disciplines from both the sciences and the arts. Along with its companion volume, Progress in Colour Studies 1: Language and Culture, this book offers a fascinating insight into current issues and research into colour. Most of the papers originated in a 2004 conference entitled ‘Progress in Colour Studies’ held in the University of Glasgow, U.K. Some additional invited papers are included from investigators exploring new and exciting avenues of colour research. The contributions to both books represent reviews of state-of-the-art colour research in various disciplines, and some new research findings are reported. This volume, principally psychological in content, focuses on the development of colour perception and colour language, from infancy into adulthood, across a diverse range of cultures, including English, Himba, Chinese, and Mexican, and on the intriguing yet perplexing condition of synaesthesia, thus bridging research from the physiology, psychology and anthropology of colour.

"What is the mind?"

"What is the relationship between brain and mind?"

These are common questions. But "What is the brain?" is a rare question in both the neurosciences and philosophy. The reason for this may lie in the brain itself: Is there a "brain problem"?

In this fresh and innovative book, Georg Northoff demonstrates that there is in fact a "brain problem". He argues that our brain can only be understood when its empirical functions are directly related to the modes of acquiring knowledge, our epistemic abilities and inabilities. Drawing on the latest neuroscientific data and philosophical theories, he provides an empirical-epistemic definition of the brain. Northoff reveals the basic conceptual confusion about the relationship between mind and brain that has so obstinately been lingering in both neuroscience and philosophy. He subsequently develops an alternative framework where the integration of the brain within body and environment is central. This novel approach plunges the reader into the depths of our own brain. The "Philosophy of the Brain" that emerges opens the door to a fascinating world of new findings that explore the mind and its relationship to our very human brain. (Series A)

The contributions of this thematic collection center around the typology of pronominal paradigms, the generation of syntactic and semantic representations for constructions containing pronouns, and the neurological underpinnings for linguistic distinctions that are relevant for the production and interpretation of these constructions. They come from different theoretical approaches and methodological backgrounds and take into account data from a wide range of Indoeuropean and non-Indoeuropean languages. Bringing together a cross-section of recent research on the grammar and representation of pronouns, the volume offers a kaleidoscope of studies united by the common topic of pronouns as a domain of language that exemplarily shows the interaction of different components responsible for computational (syntactic and semantic), lexical, and discourse-pragmatic processes.

The Physical Nature of Consciousness contains twelve chapters that discuss recent and new perspectives on the relation between modern physics and consciousness.

Stuart Hameroff opens with an extended and updated exposition of the Penrose/Hameroff Orch-OR model, and subsequently addresses recent criticisms of quantum approaches to the brain. Evan Walker presents his view on consciousness from the perspective of a new approach to the integration of quantum theory and relativity. Friedrich Beck elaborates on the Beck/Eccles quantum approach to consciousness. Karl Pribram puts the holographic view on consciousness in perspective of his life long work. Peter Marcer and Edgar Mitchell explain the relevance of quantum holography for consciousness. Gordon Globus discusses the relation between postmodern philosophical theories and quantum consciousness. Chris Clarke develops a theory in terms of a specific type of formal logic to reconcile the phenomenology of consciousness with the physical world. Ilya Prigogine summarizes his view on complexity, and on the future of quantum theory, which goes beyond the present formalism, and goes on to comment on the problem of consciousness. Matti Pitkanen identifies the place for consciousness in a unifying topological geometro-dynamics theory. Colin McGinn argues against classical materialism. Dick Bierman gives an overview of anomalous phenomena. He identifies a decline effect, and discusses different possible interpretations. Philip Van Loocke closes the volume with a discussion on how deep teleology in cellular systems may relate to consciousness. (Series A)

Will our everyday account of ourselves be vindicated by a new science? Or, will our self-understanding remain untouched by such developments? This book argues that beliefs and desires have a legitimate place in the explanation of action. Eliminativist arguments mistakenly focus on the vehicles of content not content itself. This book asks whether a naturalistic theory of content is possible. It is argued that a modest biosemantic theory of intentional, but nonconceptual, content is the naturalist’s best bet. A theory of this kind complements connectionism and recent work on embodied and embedded cognition. But intentional content is not equivalent to propositional content. In order to understand propositional content we must rely on Davidsonian radical interpretation.

However, radical interpretation is shown to be at odds with physicalism. But if the best naturalised theory of content we are likely to get from cognitive science is only a theory of intentional content, then a naturalistic explanation of scientific theorising is not possible. It is concluded that cognitive science alone cannot explain the nature of our minds and that eliminativism is intellectually incoherent. (Series A)

This interdisciplinary work discloses an unexpected coherence between recent concepts in brain science and postmodern thought. A nonlinear dynamical model of brain states is viewed as an autopoietic, autorhoetic, self-organizing, self-tuning eruption under multiple constraints and guided by an overarching optimization principle which insures conservation of invariances and enhancement of symmetries. The nonlinear dynamical brain as developed shows quantum nonlocality, undergoes chaotic regimes, and does not compute. Heidegger and Derrida are ‘appropriated’ as dynamical theorists who are concerned respectively with the movement of time and being (Ereignis) and text (Différance). The chasm between postmodern thought and the thoroughly metaphysical theory that the brain computes is breached, once the nonlinear dynamical framework is adopted. The book is written in a postmodern style, making playful, opportunistic use of marginalia and dreams, and presenting a nonserial surface of broken complexity. (Series A)