Reclaiming Cognition: The Primacy of Action, Intention and Emotion (Journal of Consciousness Studies)
"This collection has a lot going for it and is deserving of a wide readership." --Anthony Chemero, Philosophical PsychologyA notable collection of essays that will give much pleasure to those who have been missing the living body - and its actions and reactions - in contemporary cognitive and neural studies; a must read for those who haven't. --Antonio DamasioJust as the 1990s were the Decade of the Brain, many have argued that we are now entering the Decade of the Mind. Meeting such a challenge requires that we transcend the crude reductionism and narrow cognitivism that has characterized much of the brain and behavioural sciences of the past century. Reclaiming Cognition teaches us that minds are not architectural modular structures that deal in information, but are constituted by the dynamic interactions of perceiver and percept, knower and that which is to be known - socially, developmentally and evolutionarily formed. --Steven RoseThe evidence from all over the cognitive sciences is overwhelming: Conceptual systems and language are embodied in the deepest way, shaped by the nature of our brains, our bodies, and our everyday functioning in the world. Reclaiming Cognition helps to wash away the old view of the mind as abstract and disembodied, of thought as symbol manipulation - something a computer could do - and of emotion as separate from reason. --George LakoffThis collection is a valuable contribution to the elaboration and application of an understanding of mind and brain as situated and embodied. As such, it is timely and important.  Although it is unlikely anyone will agree with all the papers, together they pose a challenge every cognitive scientist, neuroscientist and philosopher has to face. --Hubert DreyfusViews of the mind as essentially embodied and embedded in its environment have recently made powerful advances in understanding perception and action and now have taken on cognition. This timely and richly interdisciplinary collection of essays, by innovative thinkers, displays the current exuberance of theoretical alternatives to the computational mainstream. --Susan Hurley