This book is an essay on how people make sense of each other and the world they live in. Making sense is the activity of fitting something puzzling into a coherent pattern of mental representations that include concepts, beliefs, goals, and actions. Paul Thagard proposes a general theory of coherence as the satisfaction of multiple interacting constraints, and discusses the theory's numerous psychological and philosophical applications. Much of human cognition can be understood in terms of coherence as constraint satisfaction, and many of the central problems of philosophy can be given coherence-based solutions. Thagard shows how coherence can help to unify psychology and philosophy, particularly when addressing questions of epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, politics, and aesthetics. He also shows how coherence can integrate cognition and emotion.

First published in 2002. This is Volume X of twelve in the Library of Philosophy series on Ethics. Written in 1927, this book presents a study in the Coherence Theory of Goodness and looks at areas of will and its context, self and self-knowledge, the world and self and develops into the will as immediate and as individual. The book ends on will as both moral and social. It looks at goodness on two main sides The first is that goodness has its roots in the spiritual activity called willing; that it belongs to things, not in themselves, but as objects of some kind of willing. The second is that goodness belongs to the coherent will; that different kinds of goodness, whether in actions or in things, are due to the different kinds of coherence in the will which wills them; and that moral goodness in particular belongs to a will which. is coherent as a member of an all-inclusive, society of coherent wills.

Cogito, ergo sum. ("I think, therefore I am.") When Descartes quipped this, he erroneously split thinking from feeling. He assumed thoughts emerge from a substance other than feeling. This is a historic tragedy, and it is unnecessary. It brings us to a risky end-game. When we attempt to meld preconceived thought with evoked feelings, we come to the craft of "spin doctors." Instead, there is a natural path for connecting thinking and feeling. It involves emotional reflection at the time that understandings are created. This book draws attention to a form of dialogue which is called design dialogue. Design dialogue constructs new meaning from the bottom up. Individuals construct new meanings through individual thinking. In design dialogue, meaning results from group thinking. Group thinking is not as simple as thinking individually while being present within a group. The design process results in a series of co-constructed learning artifacts which, ultimately, constitute a new understanding. The process is concurrently emotional and cognitive, and melding emotion and cognition is achievable with effective design dialogue methods. The first chapter introduces emotion as the catalyst for considering questions, persisting in reflection, and concluding a cycle of thought. This chapter fills in gaps with the treatment of emotion and cognition. The second chapter lays out the sequence of observation-taking, sensemaking, meaning-making, and perspective-taking that are essential steps in thinking. Frameworks for thinking in educational traditions focus not so much on the neurological mechanics of the thought process but rather on the overall internalization of a "way" of understanding things. A third chapter presents a methodology for managing a design dialogue. Group facilitators generally invent and modify their own approaches for leading design projects. This chapter presents a codified approach that offers an advantage of supporting continuous improvement of complex design management methodology. And the final chapter considers the emergence of a sapient group-mind through the agency of design dialogue. This conjectured group-mind is considered in the context of the civic infrastructure that is needed to sustain the continual growth of the human superorganism structure. As humanity has moved from tribes, to cities, to institutions, and now to globally connected networks, each leap forward has been accompanied by profound changes in social practices and belief systems. Recent findings from the field of cognitive science have confirmed a suspicion that we have long held about each other. Individual thinking is biased and flawed. Inclusive and democratically managed discussion, deliberation and design all help to identify and dampen flawed understandings. The individual mind, an essential ingredient in the human spirit, is now, as a matter of practical necessity, bending to the wisdom of a well-informed group mind. The speed and strength of newly emerging social forces and evolving civic trends point to the conclusion that we are on the threshold for a new way of being. This book seeks to evoke reflection on how we can start communicating in a way that prepares us for life in that new future.

Bede Rundle challenges the quasi-mechanical view of human action that is dominant in contemporary philosophy of mind. A materialist view of the mind and a causal theory of action fit together conveniently: the notion of action as caused by thoughts and desires allows philosophers to accommodate explanations of action within a framework that is congenial to scientific understanding, and the conception of mind as physical enables them to make sense of causal transactions between the two domains. Mind in Action offers an alternative approach. Compelling reasons are given for demoting causation and for shifting the emphasis to the role played by behaviour in accounts of thought, belief, desire, intention, freedom, and other key concepts. Rundle's approach sheds fresh light not only on human behaviour but also on animal mentality, and has important implications for the feasibility of current programmes in cognitive science.

Haig Khatchadourian is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukie. He received his PhD in philosophy from Duke University and has been awarded several prizes for poetry and literary essays. In 1973 he received the Outstanding Educator of America Award.

Major New York Times bestseller Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award in 2012 Selected by the New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011 A Globe and Mail Best Books of the Year 2011 Title One of The Economist's 2011 Books of the Year One of The Wall Street Journal's Best Nonfiction Books of the Year 2011 2013 Presidential Medal of Freedom Recipient Kahneman's work with Amos Tversky is the subject of Michael Lewis's The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, the renowned psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, the difficulties of predicting what will make us happy in the future, the profound effect of cognitive biases on everything from playing the stock market to planning our next vacation—each of these can be understood only by knowing how the two systems shape our judgments and decisions. Engaging the reader in a lively conversation about how we think, Kahneman reveals where we can and cannot trust our intuitions and how we can tap into the benefits of slow thinking. He offers practical and enlightening insights into how choices are made in both our business and our personal lives—and how we can use different techniques to guard against the mental glitches that often get us into trouble. Winner of the National Academy of Sciences Best Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and selected by The New York Times Book Review as one of the ten best books of 2011, Thinking, Fast and Slow is destined to be a classic.

Consciousness in Interaction is an interdisciplinary collection with contributions from philosophers, psychologists, cognitive scientists, and historians of philosophy. It revolves around the idea that consciousness emerges from, and impacts on, our skilled interactions with the natural and social context. Section one discusses how phenomenal consciousness and subjective selfhood are grounded on natural and social interactions, and what role brain activity plays in these phenomena. Section two analyzes how interactions with external objects and other human beings shape our understanding of ourselves, and how consciousness changes social interaction, self-control and emotions. Section three provides historical depth to the volume, by tracing the roots of the contemporary notion of consciousness in early modern philosophy. The book offers interdisciplinary insight on a variety of key topics in consciousness research: as such, it is of particular interest for researchers from philosophy of mind, phenomenology, cognitive and social sciences, and humanities.