Causal Models: How People Think about the World and Its Alternatives by Steven Sloman |
The Book of Evidence (Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Science) by Peter Achinstein |
Join Amazon Prime and ship Two-Day for free and Overnight for $3.99. Already a member? Sign in.
Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought
Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Explanations seem to be a large and natural part of our cognitive lives. As Frank Keil and Robert Wilson write, "When a cognitive activity is so ubiquitous that it is expressed both in a preschooler's idle questions and in work that is the culmination of decades of scholarly effort, one has to ask whether we really have one and the same phenomenon or merely different cognitively based phenomena that are loosely, or even metaphorically, related."
This book is unusual in its interdisciplinary approach to that ubiquitous activity. The essays address five basic questions about explanation: How do explanatory capacities develop? Are there kinds of explanation? Do explanations correspond to domains of knowledge? Why do we seek explanations, and what do they accomplish? How central are causes to explanation? The essays draw on work in the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind and language, the development of concepts in children, conceptual change in adults, and reasoning in human and artificial systems. They also introduce emerging perspectives on explanation from computer science, linguistics, and anthropology.
Contributors:
Woo-kyoung Ahn, William F. Brewer, Patricia W. Cheng, Clark A. Chinn, Andy Clark, Robert Cummins, Clark Glymour, Alison Gopnik, Christine Johnson, Charles W. Kalish, Frank C. Keil, Robert N. McCauley, Gregory L. Murphy, Ala Samarapungavan, Herbert A. Simon, Paul Thagard, Robert A. Wilson.
About the Author
Frank C. Keil is Professor of Psychology at Yale University.
Rob Wilson received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cornell University in 1992, and has taught at Queen's University, Canada (1992-1996), and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1996-2001), where he was a member of the Cognitive Science Group at the university's Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Since July 2000 he has been professor of philosophy at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada. His areas of professional interest are the philosophy of the mind, the foundations of cognitive science, and the philosophy of biology. He recently edited Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays (MIT Press, 1999), and with Frank Keil, is the general editor of The MIT Press Encyclopedia of the Cogn
Explanations seem to be a large and natural part of our cognitive lives. As Frank Keil and Robert Wilson write, "When a cognitive activity is so ubiquitous that it is expressed both in a preschooler's idle questions and in work that is the culmination of decades of scholarly effort, one has to ask whether we really have one and the same phenomenon or merely different cognitively based phenomena that are loosely, or even metaphorically, related."
This book is unusual in its interdisciplinary approach to that ubiquitous activity. The essays address five basic questions about explanation: How do explanatory capacities develop? Are there kinds of explanation? Do explanations correspond to domains of knowledge? Why do we seek explanations, and what do they accomplish? How central are causes to explanation? The essays draw on work in the history and philosophy of science, the philosophy of mind and language, the development of concepts in children, conceptual change in adults, and reasoning in human and artificial systems. They also introduce emerging perspectives on explanation from computer science, linguistics, and anthropology.
Contributors:
Woo-kyoung Ahn, William F. Brewer, Patricia W. Cheng, Clark A. Chinn, Andy Clark, Robert Cummins, Clark Glymour, Alison Gopnik, Christine Johnson, Charles W. Kalish, Frank C. Keil, Robert N. McCauley, Gregory L. Murphy, Ala Samarapungavan, Herbert A. Simon, Paul Thagard, Robert A. Wilson.
About the Author
Frank C. Keil is Professor of Psychology at Yale University.
Rob Wilson received his Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cornell University in 1992, and has taught at Queen's University, Canada (1992-1996), and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (1996-2001), where he was a member of the Cognitive Science Group at the university's Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Since July 2000 he has been professor of philosophy at the University of Alberta, in Edmonton, Canada. His areas of professional interest are the philosophy of the mind, the foundations of cognitive science, and the philosophy of biology. He recently edited Species: New Interdisciplinary Essays (MIT Press, 1999), and with Frank Keil, is the general editor of The MIT Press Encyclopedia of the Cogn