In a further development of the nature-nurture debate, this collection of articles questions how the human mind influences the content and organization of culture. In the study of mental activity, can the effects of evolution and history be teased apart? Evolutionary psychologists argue that cultural transmission is constrained by our genetic inheritance. Few social and cultural anthropologists have found this argument to be relevant to their work and many would doubt its validity. This book uniquely pitches the arguments for innatism against ethnographic perspectives that call into question the theoretical foundations of orthodox evolutionary biology and cognitive science. Ultimately the aim of the debate is to create an original set of mutually compatible theories that will open up new areas for interdisciplinary research.

A comprehensive examination of a hotly debated question proposes a new model for mindreading in animals and a new experimental approach. Animals live in a world of other minds, human and nonhuman, and their well-being and survival often depends on what is going on in the minds of these other creatures. But do animals know that other creatures have minds? And how would we know if they do? In Mindreading Animals, Robert Lurz offers a fresh approach to the hotly debated question of mental-state attribution in nonhuman animals. Some empirical researchers and philosophers claim that some animals are capable of anticipating other creatures' behaviors by interpreting observable cues as signs of underlying mental states; others claim that animals are merely clever behavior-readers, capable of using such cues to anticipate others' behaviors without interpreting them as evidence of underlying mental states. Lurz argues that neither position is compelling and proposes a way to move the debate, and the field, forward. Lurz offers a bottom-up model of mental-state attribution that is built on cognitive abilities that animals are known to possess rather than on a preconceived view of the mind applicable to mindreading abilities in humans. Lurz goes on to describe an innovative series of new experimental protocols for animal mindreading research that show in detail how various types of animals—from apes to monkeys to ravens to dogs—can be tested for perceptual state and belief attribution.

The 14 specially commissioned chapters in this superb collection enrich McDowell and Dreyfus's debate over perceptual experience, rationality, reflectiveness, and perception. Mind, Reason and Being-in-the-World: The McDowell-Dreyfus Debate should be considered essential reading for both students and scholars of analytic philosophy and phenomenology.

The concept of truthmaking is attracting much attention in contemporary metaphysics. This work asks how the truthmaker principle should be formulated, whether it is well motivated, whether it genuinely has the explanatory roles claimed for it, and whether more modest principles might serve just as well.

Many philosophers and psychologists argue that normal adult human beings possess a primitive or 'folk' psychological theory. Recently, however, this theory has come under challenge from the simulation alternative . This alternative view says that human bings are able to predict and explain each others' actions by using the resources of their own minds to simuate the psychological etiology of the actions of others. The thirteen essays in this volume present the foundations of theory of mind debate, and are accompanied by an extensive introduction.

Michael Tye untangles the complex web of empirical and conceptual issues of the newly revived imagery debate in psychology between those that liken mental images to pictures and those that liken them to linguistic descriptions. He also takes into account longstanding philosophical issues, to arrive at a comprehensive, up-to-date view and an original theory that provides answers to questions raised in both psychology and philosophy. Drawing on the insights of Stephen Kosslyn and the work on vision of David Mart, Tye develops a new theory of mental imagery that includes an account of imagistic representation and also tackles questions about the phenomenal qualities of mental images, image indeterminacy, the neurophysiolgical basis of imagery, and the causal relevance of image content to behavior. Tye introduces the history of philosophical views on the nature of mental imagery from Aristotle to Kant. He examines the reasons for the decline of picture theories of imagery and the use of alternative theories, the reemergence of the picture theory (with special reference to the work of Stephen Kosslyn), and the contrasting view that mental images are inner linguistic descriptions rather than pictorial representations. He then proposes his own theory of images interpreted as symbol-filled arrays in part like pictures and in part like linguistic descriptions, addresses the issue of vagueness in some features of mental images, and argues that images need not have qualia to account for their phenomenological character. Tye concludes by discussing the questions of how images are physically realized in the brain and how the contents of images can be causally related to behavior.

"Read this book, strengthen your resolve, and help us all return to reason." —JORDAN PETERSON The West’s commitment to freedom, reason, and true liberalism have become endangered by a series of viral forces in our society today. Renowned host of the popular YouTube show “The SAAD Truth”, Dr. Gad Saad exposes how an epidemic of idea pathogens are spreading like a virus and killing common sense in the West. Serving as a powerful follow-up to Jordan Peterson’s book 12 Rules for Life Dr. Saad unpacks what is really happening in progressive safe zones, why we need to be paying more attention to these trends, and what we must do to stop the spread of dangerous thinking. A professor at Concordia University who has witnessed this troubling epidemic first-hand, Dr. Saad dissects a multitude of these concerning forces (corrupt thought patterns, belief systems, attitudes, etc.) that have given rise to a stifling political correctness in our society and how these have created serious consequences that must be remedied–before it’s too late.