Ideas have spurred the way to human progress, from the earliest cave dweller to the latest frontiers of computers and technology.

Parents, friends, teachers, relatives, and even work colleagues - from the people close to us to those we never even meet - other people are constantly shaping who we are.The mirror neuron is a part of the brain that has shaped each and every one of us throughout our lifetimes. It is the very essence of what makes us human, but most of us have never even heard of it. Mirror Thinking explores how the mirror neuron has defined us through the role models we observe and interact with. All of the learning we take from our world is down to our brain's mirror system, but it doesn't stop there. This incredible system is also responsible for our emotional connections with others, how we pass on learning between the generations through stories, and how we imagine and innovate within our own minds. In Mirror Thinking, psychologist and award-winning author Fiona Murden looks at the mirrors that have shaped our lives: parents, friends, teachers, relatives, and even work colleagues. From the people close to us to those we never even meet - other people are constantly shaping who we are. By having a better understanding of this system we are able to take conscious control of it, encouraging us to have a more positive impact on the world around us and on society as a whole.

Melanie Mitchell separates science fact from science fiction in this sweeping examination of the current state of AI and how it is remaking our world No recent scientific enterprise has proved as alluring, terrifying, and filled with extravagant promise and frustrating setbacks as artificial intelligence. The award-winning author Melanie Mitchell, a leading computer scientist, now reveals AI’s turbulent history and the recent spate of apparent successes, grand hopes, and emerging fears surrounding it. In Artificial Intelligence, Mitchell turns to the most urgent questions concerning AI today: How intelligent—really—are the best AI programs? How do they work? What can they actually do, and when do they fail? How humanlike do we expect them to become, and how soon do we need to worry about them surpassing us? Along the way, she introduces the dominant models of modern AI and machine learning, describing cutting-edge AI programs, their human inventors, and the historical lines of thought underpinning recent achievements. She meets with fellow experts such as Douglas Hofstadter, the cognitive scientist and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of the modern classic Gödel, Escher, Bach, who explains why he is “terrified” about the future of AI. She explores the profound disconnect between the hype and the actual achievements in AI, providing a clear sense of what the field has accomplished and how much further it has to go. Interweaving stories about the science of AI and the people behind it, Artificial Intelligence brims with clear-sighted, captivating, and accessible accounts of the most interesting and provocative modern work in the field, flavored with Mitchell’s humor and personal observations. This frank, lively book is an indispensable guide to understanding today’s AI, its quest for “human-level” intelligence, and its impact on the future for us all.

"We vote Key ideas the year's best browse". -- Newsweek Key Ideas in Human Thought explains 2,500 of the most important terms and concepts that have shaped the modern world. Encompassing all fields of inquiry from science to history, this rich compendium is a valuable tool for anyone.

With sections on perception, memory, emotion, thought, consciousness, and the unconscious, "The Book of the Mind" is an imaginative bringing together of case notes, journals, and letters, that present humanity's most significant attempts to understand the mind and how it works.

Traditions throughout the world and across history have tackled fundamental questions about the human condition. This one-of-a-kind guide shows how these different philosophies can be effectively studied together. Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach's and Leah Kalmanson's introduction marks a break from conventional approaches. Instead of assuming philosophy has always operated with a single, easily identifiable conceptual framework across space and time, which we call-and have always called-philosophy, they attest to the plurality of concepts and methods adopted at different times and places. The book serves as a practical teaching guide to the theoretical and methodological diversification of philosophy as practiced in academia today. Complementing the Bloomsbury Introductions to World Philosophies series, it covers a variety of traditions featured in the book series, exploring how Anglo-American, Chinese, Indian, African, Islamicate, and Maori thinkers have all addressed fundamental questions such as: · How do we understand ourselves and our relations to others? · How do we understand our world? · How do we seek knowledge, share knowledge, and, importantly, intervene in the norms of received knowledge when needed? Featuring teaching notes, discussion questions, and a list of further reading, this is a book packed with the background, guidance, and tools required to teach different philosophies. Through it we come to see why making room for different conceptual frameworks improves our understanding of ourselves and the worlds we live in.

The Bloomsbury Guide to Philosophy of Disability is a revolutionary collection encompassing the most innovative and insurgent work in philosophy of disability. Edited and anthologized by disabled philosopher Shelley Lynn Tremain, this book challenges how disability has historically been represented and understood in philosophy: it critically undermines the detrimental assumptions that various subfields of philosophy produce; resists the institutionalized ableism of academia to which these assumptions contribute; and boldly articulates new anti-ableist, anti-sexist, anti-racist, queer, anti-capitalist, anti-carceral, and decolonial insights and perspectives that counter these assumptions. This rebellious and groundbreaking book's chapters–most of which have been written by disabled philosophers–are wide-ranging in scope and invite a broad readership. The chapters underscore the eugenic impetus at the heart of bioethics; talk back to the whiteness of work on philosophy and disability with which philosophy of disability is often conflated; and elaborate phenomenological, poststructuralist, and materialist approaches to a variety of phenomena. Topics addressed in the book include: ableism and speciesism; disability, race, and algorithms; race, disability, and reproductive technologies; disability and music; disabled and trans identities and emotions; the apparatus of addiction; and disability, race, and risk. With cutting-edge analyses and engaging prose, the authors of this guide contest the assumptions of Western disability studies through the lens of African philosophy of disability and the developing framework of crip Filipino philosophy; articulate the political and conceptual limits of common constructions of inclusion and accessibility; and foreground the practices of epistemic injustice that neurominoritized people routinely confront in philosophy and society more broadly. A crucial guide to oppositional thinking from an international, intersectional, and inclusive collection of philosophers, this book will advance the emerging field of philosophy of disability and serve as an antidote to the historical exclusion of disabled philosophers from the discipline and profession of philosophy. The Bloomsbury Guide to Philosophy of Disability is essential reading for faculty and students in philosophy, disability studies, political theory, Africana studies, Latinx studies, women's and gender studies, LGBTQ studies, and cultural studies, as well as activists, cultural workers, policymakers, and everyone else concerned with matters of social justice. Description of the book's cover: The book's title appears on two lines across the top of the cover which is a salmon tone. The names of the editor and the author of the foreword appear in white letters at the bottom of the book. The publisher's name is printed along the right side in white letters. At the centre, a vertical white rectangle is the background for a sculpture by fibre artist Judith Scott. The sculpture combines layers of shiny yarn in various colours including orange, pink, brown, and rust woven vertically on a large cylinder and horizontally around a smaller cylinder, as well as blue yarn woven around a protruding piece at the bottom of the sculpture. The sculpture seems to represent a body and head of a being sitting down, a being with one appendage, a fat person, or a little person.