Simulating Minds

Simulating Minds by Alvin I Goldman

People are minded creatures; we have thoughts, feelings and emotions. More intriguingly, we grasp our own mental states, and conduct the business of ascribing them to ourselves and others without instruction in formal psychology. How do we do this? And what are the dimensions of our grasp of the mental realm? In this book, Alvin I. Goldman explores these questions with the tools of philosophy, developmental psychology, social psychology and cognitive neuroscience. He refines an approach called simulation theory, which starts from the familiar idea that we understand others by putting ourselves in their mental shoes. Can this intuitive idea be rendered precise in a philosophically respectable manner, without allowing simulation to collapse into theorizing? Given a suitable definition, do empirical results support the notion that minds literally create (or attempt to create) surrogates of other peoples mental states in the process of mindreading? Goldman amasses a surprising array of evidence from psychology and neuroscience that supports this hypothesis.

Stimulating Minds is a masterful defense of an important theory of mindreading, and landmark contribution to the philosophy of mindIt deserves a wide audience. * Philip Robbins MIND *

Alvin I. Goldman is Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780195369830
ISBN 10	0195369831
Title	Simulating Minds
Author	Alvin I Goldman
Series	Philosophy Of Mind Series
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Oxford University Press Inc
Year published	2008-05-01
Number of pages	384
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable