This novel approach to epistemological discourse explains the complex but crucial role that systematization plays-not just for the organization of what we know, but also for its validation. Cognitive Harmony argues for a new conception of the process philosophers generally call induction. Relying on the root definition of harmony, a coherent unification of component parts (systemic integrity) in such a way that the final object can successfully accomplish what it was meant to do (evaluative positivity), Rescher discusses the role of harmony in cognitive contexts, the history of cognitive harmony, and the various features it has in producing human knowledge. The book ends on the issue of philosophy and the sort of harmony required of philosophical systems.

This book addresses the difference between the mental processes of animals and those of the human mind.

The big question in the science of psychology is: why is human cognition and behavior so different from the capabilities of every other animal species on Earth – including our close genetic relations, the chimpanzees? This book provides a coherent answer by examining those aspects of the human brain that have made triadic forms of perception and cognition possible. Mechanisms of dyadic association sufficiently explain animal perception, cognition and behavior but a three-way associational mechanism is required to explain the human talents for language, tool-making, harmony perception, pictorial depth perception and the joint attention that underlies all forms of social cooperation.

A comprehensive introduction to the computational modeling of human cognition.

While preserving the elements that have made the previous two editions so successful—such as chapters on sleep, exercise, memory and mindset—this third edition introduces students to wholly new aspects of brain function and how they impact learning; and furthermore, addresses the challenges of learning online. By introducing new concepts, strategies, and applications related to learning and memory that are based on current findings in cognitive, social, and motivational psychology, this text offers a richer and more complete picture of how brain science illuminates how we learn. Students assigned this book will be equipped to design effective learning plans, employ new strategies, recognize learning traps, discover ways to work effectively in groups, improve recall, and realize better academic performance through test-taking and paper-writing strategies. This new edition also addresses the concerns of all students—particularly those unfamiliar with the college setting and its expectations and assumptions—and offers strategies for success. In keeping with the preceding editions, this book introduces students to concepts, techniques, strategies, tips, and ideas to help them be academically stronger students, advance faster in their studies, and demonstrate what they have learned more effectively—in short, how anyone can learn to be a better learner by learning how to learn in harmony with their brain. The book remains compact and student-friendly, offers examples of practice, and includes discussion questions at the end of each chapter.

This study examines how key figures in the German aesthetic tradition - Kant, Schelling, Friedrich Schlegel, Hegel, and Adorno - attempted to think through the powers and limits of art in post-Enlightenment modernity. Ayon Maharaj argues that the aesthetic speculations of these thinkers provide the conceptual resources for a timely dialectical defense of “aesthetic agency”- art's capacity to make available uniquely valuable modes of experience that escape the purview of Enlightenment scientific rationality. Blending careful philosophical analysis with an intellectual historian's attention to the broader cultural resonance of philosophical arguments, Maharaj has two interrelated aims. He provides challenging new interpretations of the aesthetic philosophies of Kant, Schelling, Schlegel, Hegel, and Adorno by focusing on aspects of their thought that have been neglected or misunderstood in Anglo-American and German scholarship. He demonstrates that their subtle investigations into the nature and scope of aesthetic agency have far-reaching implications for contemporary discourse on the arts. The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency is an important and original contribution to scholarship on the German aesthetic tradition and to the broader field of aesthetics.