"Philosophy of Psychology" is an introduction to philosophical problems that arise in the scientific study of cognition and behavior. Jose Luis Bermudez introduces the philosophy of psychology as an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature and mechanisms of cognition. "Philosophy of Psychology" charts out four influential "pictures of the mind" and uses them to explore central topics in the philosophical foundations of psychology, including the relation between different levels of studying the mind/brain; the nature and scope of psychological explanation; the architecture of cognition; and the relation between thought and language. An introductory chapter looks at what the philosophy of psychology is, tracing its historical background and exploring its relationship to philosophy of mind and to psychology itself.
Further chapters cover all the core concepts and themes found in undergraduate courses in philosophy of psychology, including: - Models of psychological explanation - The nature of commonsense psychology - Arguments for the autonomy of psychology - Functionalist approaches to cognition - Computational models of the mind - Neural network modeling - Rationality and mental causation - Perception, action and cognition - The language of thought and the architecture of cognition "Philosophy of Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction" is a very clear and well-structured textbook from one of the leaders in the field. Jose Luis Bermudez is Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Philosophy-Neuroscience-Psychology Program at Washington University in St Louis, USA. He is series editor of the International Library of Philosophy (Routledge) and author of "The Paradox of Self-Consciousness" (1998) and "Thinking without Words" (2003).