What holds together the various fields that are supposed to consititute the general intellectual discipline that people now call cognitive science? In this book, Erneling and Johnson identify two problems with defining this discipline. First, some theorists identify the common subject matter as the mind, but scientists and philosophers have not been able to agree on any single, satisfactory answer to the question of what the mind is. Second, those who speculate about the general characteristics that belong to cognitive science tend to assume that all the particular fields falling under the rubric--psychology, linguistics, biology, and son on--are of roughly equal value in their ability to shed light on the nature of mind. This book argues that all the cognitive science disciplines are not equally able to provide answers to ontological questions about the mind, but rather that only neurophysiology and cultural psychology are suited to answer these questions. However, since the cultural account of mind has long been ignored in favor of the neurophysiological account, Erneling and Johnson bring together contributions that focus especially on different versions of the cultural account of the mind.

Christina E. Erneling's profile page

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Christina E. Erneling is at Lund University. David M. Johnson is at York University.

"This is an unusually cogent book, whose editors look beyond the accepted disciplinary structures of cognitive science to the environment and human culture in order to examine 'mind.' Erneling and Johnson succeed admirably in exploring the alternative of the cultural approach to mentality, whilst recognizing the significance of neurophysiology."--The Mind as a Scientific Object