This is a book about how we see: the environment around us (its surfaces, their layout, and their colors and textures); where we are in the environment; whether or not we are moving and, if we are, where we are going; what things are good for; how to do things (to thread a needle or drive an automobile); or why things look as they do. The basic assumption is that vision depends on the eye which is connected to the brain. The author suggests that natural vision depends on the eyes in the head on a body supported by the ground, the brain being only the central organ of a complete visual system. When no constraints are put on the visual system, people look around, walk up to something interesting and move around it so as to see it from all sides, and go from one vista to another. That is natural vision -- and what this book is about.

在《经济学理论与认知科学:微观解释》中，唐·罗斯探讨了经济学与行为科学的其他分支学科之间的关系。他的理论分析围绕如下中心议题展开：怎样才能把经济学阐释为一门健全的经验科学。认知科学、行为科学与经济学家的日常研究密切相关，唐·罗斯此书对经济理论与这些相关学科的理论基础之间的各种关系进行了深入探究。该书提出的一个问题是：日趋成熟的微观经济分析技术是否真的揭示了某些深层次的经验规律?或者说，技术进步在其它意义上是否也代表着某种改善?罗斯在书中把丹尼尔·丹尼特和肯尼思·宾默尔塑造为知识英雄，并以他们的思想为依托给出了一个整全性的经济理论模型，罗斯强调指出，它并不是要取代新古典主义，恰恰相反，它是新古典主义核心见解的复兴，并反对行为经济学和演化经济学的某些倡导者把新古典主义当作一种漫画式的过时观念加以冷嘲热讽的做法。

People use metaphors every time they speak. Some of those metaphors are literary - devices for making thoughts more vivid or entertaining. But most are much more basic than that - they're "metaphors we live by", metaphors we use without even realizing we're using them. In this book, George Lakoff and Mark Johnson suggest that these basic metaphors not only affect the way we communicate ideas, but actually structure our perceptions and understandings from the beginning. Bringing together the perspectives of linguistics and philosophy, Lakoff and Johnson offer an intriguing and surprising guide to some of the most common metaphors and what they can tell us about the human mind. And for this new edition, they supply an afterword both extending their arguments and offering a fascinating overview of the current state of thinking on the subject of the metaphor.

Much of what we know we cannot say. And much of what we do we cannot describe. For example, how do we know how to ride a bike when we can't explain how we do it? These abilities, which we are unable to articulate, were labeled "tacit knowledge" by chemist and philosopher Michael Polanyi, but here Harry Collins analyzes the term, and the behavior, in much greater detail, often departing from Polanyi's treatment. In "Tacit and Explicit Knowledge", Collins develops a common conceptual language to bridge the concept's disparate domains by explaining explicit knowledge and classifying tacit knowledge. Collins then teases apart the three very different meanings, which, until now, all fell under the umbrella of Polanyi's term: relational tacit knowledge (things we could describe in principle if we put in the effort), somatic tacit knowledge (things our bodies can do but we cannot describe, like balancing on a bike), and collective tacit knowledge (knowledge we draw on that is the property of society, such as the rules for language). Thus, bicycle riding consists of some somatic tacit knowledge and some collective tacit knowledge, such as the knowledge that allows us to navigate in traffic. The intermixing of the three kinds of tacit knowledge has led to confusion in the past; Collins' book unravels these complexities and thus enables us to make new and better use of the underlying concept.

Combining insights from both cognitive neuroscience and molecular biology, two of the world's leading experts address memory from molecules and cells to brain systems and cognition. What is memory and where in the brain is it stored? How is memory storage accomplished? This book touches on these questions and many more, showing how the recent convergence of psychology and biology has resulted in an exciting new synthesis of knowledge about learning and remembering. Memory: From Mind to Molecules is an ideal primer for courses on learning and memory or for general readers who are interested in discovering what is currently known about one of the basic aspects of human existence.

Bottleneck is about “the Narrowness of Now”, the shockingly low information rate of human learning, our learning bottleneck. It is what we discover when we dare to apply the science of information to the psychology of perception. The book is aimed at anyone interested in the science behind our everyday human experience, and how we learn about the world around us. It reveals insights that will forever change your perspective on the world and people around you. - There is a paradox: The world we inhabit and experience through our senses appears incredibly detailed and rich in information, yet there is no scientific evidence that we are able to absorb more than a tiny trickle of fresh information from the reality that surrounds us. Bottleneck reveals the quantifiable evidence that most of the world we experience is an internal mental construct based on our history, how our mind creates a plausible narrative to make sense of what little we actually sense. This has profound implications for interactions between humans and technology. For example; it offers a scientific insight into the process of prejudice, inviting us to peer beyond our cosy moral judgements. Bottleneck also peers into the future, exploring how our learning bottleneck imposes a fundamental limit to humanity’s ability to conceive ever greater ideas.

In this study, Don Ross explores the relationship of economics to other branches of behavioral science, asking, in the course of his analysis, under what interpretation economics is a sound empirical science. The book explores the relationships between economic theory and the theoretical foundations of related disciplines that are relevant to the day-to-day work of economics -- the cognitive and behavioral sciences. It asks whether the increasingly sophisticated techniques of microeconomic analysis have revealed any deep empirical regularities -- whether technical improvement represents improvement in any other sense. Casting Daniel Dennett and Kenneth Binmore as its intellectual heroes, the book proposes a comprehensive model of economic theory that, Ross argues, does not supplant but recovers the core neoclassical insights and counters the caricaturish conception of neoclassicism so derided by advocates of behavioral or evolutionary economics.Because he approaches his topic from the viewpoint of the philosophy of science, Ross devotes one chapter to the philosophical theory and terminology on which his argument depends and another to related philosophical issues. Two chapters provide the theoretical background in economics, one covering developments in neoclassical microeconomics and the other treating behavioral and experimental economics and evolutionary game theory. The three chapters at the heart of the argument then apply theses from the philosophy of cognitive science to foundational problems for economic theory. In these chapters economists will find a genuinely new way of thinking about the implications of cognitive science for economics and cognitive scientists will find in economic behavior a new testing site for the explanations of cognitive science.

Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. With a new foreword by his daughter Mary Katherine Bateson, this classic anthology of his major work will continue to delight and inform generations of readers.

"This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life. . . . Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory. . . . He . . . examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged somewhere in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large."—D. W. Harding, New York Review of Books

"[Bateson's] view of the world, of science, of culture, and of man is vast and challenging. His efforts at synthesis are tantalizingly and cryptically suggestive. . . .This is a book we should all read and ponder."—Roger Keesing, American Anthropologist

《这个时代的无知与傲慢:索罗斯给开放社会的建言》内容简介：索罗斯是当代西方著名的哲学家卡尔波普的学生，他的思想和世界观深受其哲学思想影响。他在《这个时代的无知与傲慢:索罗斯给开放社会的建言》一书中谈到了其对人类行为的易错性，思维与真相等问题的理解，认为“我们身处一个不完美的社会，人类行为具有彻底的易错性”，试图从认识论层面重新激发人们对当今世界的看法。
索罗斯还在书中谈到了自己对911事件、反恐战争、以及美国民主自由世界观的看法，针砭时弊地指出这个时代缺陷———暴政、暴戾、无知以及傲慢；同时，也提出了他对开放世界的谏言。

Blinded by a concept
11:06 AM PDT, August 31, 2006
The failure of Israel to subdue Hezbollah demonstrates the many weaknesses of the war-on-terror concept. One of those weaknesses is that even if the targets are terrorists, the victims are often innocent civilians, and their suffering reinforces the terrorist cause.
In response to Hezbollah's attacks, Israel was justified in attacking Hezbollah to protect itself against the threat of missiles on its border. However, Israel should have taken greater care to minimize collateral damage. The civilian casualties and material damage inflicted on Lebanon inflamed Muslims and world opinion against Israel and converted Hezbollah from aggressors to heroes of resistance for many. Weakening Lebanon has also made it more difficult to rein in Hezbollah.
Another weakness of the war-on-terror concept is that it relies on military action and rules out political approaches. Israel previously withdrew from Lebanon and then from Gaza unilaterally, rather than negotiating political settlements with the Lebanese government and the Palestinian authority. The strengthening of Hezbollah and Hamas was a direct consequence of that approach. The war-on-terror concept stands in the way of recognizing this fact because it separates "us" from "them" and denies that our actions help shape their behavior.
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A third weakness is that the war-on-terror concept lumps together different political movements that use terrorist tactics. It fails to distinguish between Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda or the Sunni insurrection and the Mahdi militia in Iraq. Yet all these terrorist manifestations, being different, require different responses. Neither Hamas nor Hezbollah can be treated merely as targets in the war on terror because they have deep roots in their societies; yet there are profound differences between them.
Looking back, it is easy to see where Israeli policy went wrong. When Mahmoud Abbas was elected president of the Palestinian Authority, Israel should have gone out of its way to strengthen him and his reformist team. When Israel withdrew from Gaza, the former head of the World Bank, James Wolfensohn, negotiated a six-point plan on behalf of the Quartet for the Middle East (Russia, the United States, the European Union and the United Nations). It included opening crossings between Gaza and the West Bank, an airport and seaport in Gaza, opening the border with Egypt, and transferring the greenhouses abandoned by Israeli settlers into Arab hands.
None of the six points was implemented. This contributed to Hamas?s electoral victory. The Bush administration, having pushed Israel to allow the Palestinians to hold elections, then backed Israel?s refusal to deal with a Hamas government. The effect was to impose further hardship on the Palestinians.
Nevertheless, Abbas was able to forge an agreement with the political arm of Hamas for the formation of a unity government. It was to foil this agreement that the military branch of Hamas, run from Damascus, engaged in the provocation that brought a heavy-handed response from Israel - which in turn incited Hezbollah to further provocation, opening a second front. That is how extremists play off against each other to destroy any chance of political progress.
Israel has been a participant in this game, and President Bush bought into this flawed policy, uncritically supporting Israel. Events have shown that this policy leads to the escalation of violence. The process has advanced to the point where Israel's unquestioned military superiority is no longer sufficient to overcome the negative consequences of its policy.
Israel is now more endangered in it existence that it was at the time of the Oslo Agreement on peace. Similarly, The United States has become less safe since President Bush declared war on terror.
The time has come to realize that the present policies are counterproductive. There will be no end to the vicious circle of escalating violence without a political settlement of the Palestine question. In fact, the prospects for engaging in negotiations are better now than they were a few months ago. The Israelis must realize that a military deterrent is not sufficient on its own. And Arabs, having redeemed themselves on the battlefield, may be more willing to entertain a compromise.
There are strong voices arguing that Israel must never negotiate from a position of weakness. They are wrong. Israel?s position is liable to become weaker the longer it persists on its present course. Similarly Hezbollah, having tasted the sense but not the reality of victory (and egged on by Syria and Iran) may prove recalcitrant. But that is where the difference between Hezbollah and Hamas comes into play. The Palestinian people yearn for peace and relief from suffering. The political - as distinct from the military - wing of Hamas must be responsive to their desires. It is not too late for Israel to encourage and deal with an Abbas-led Palestinian unity government as the first step toward a better-balanced approach. Given how strong the U.S.-Israeli relationship is, it would help Israel achieve its own legitimate aims if the U.S. government were not blinded by the war-on-terror concept.

For almost a century, educational theory and practice have been influenced by the view of behavioural psychologists that learning is synonymous with behaviour change. In this book, the authors argue for the practical importance of an alternate view, that learning is synonymous with a change in the meaning of experience. They develop their theory of the conceptual nature of knowledge and describe classroom-tested strategies for helping students to construct new and more powerful meanings and to integrate thinking, feeling, and acting. In their research, they have found consistently that standard educational practices that do not lead learners to grasp the meaning of tasks usually fail to give them confidence in their abilities. It is necessary to understand why and how new information is related to what one already knows. All those concerned with the improvement of education will find something of interest in Learning How to Learn.

"Brings together the cognitive, the cultural, and the neurological in an elegant, compelling narrative. A revelatory work."
-Oliver Sacks, M.D.
The act of reading is so easily taken for granted that we forget what an astounding feat it is. How can a few black marks on white paper evoke an entire universe of meanings? It's even more amazing when we consider that we read using a primate brain that evolved to serve an entirely different purpose. In this riveting investigation, Stanislas Dehaene explores every aspect of this human invention, from its origins to its neural underpinnings. A world authority on the subject, Dehaene reveals the hidden logic of spelling, describes pioneering research on hiw we process languages, and takes us into a new appreciation of the brain and its wondrous capacity to adapt.

From Library Journal
This is an ambitious attempt to define and summarize ``cognitive science,'' a new field of scientific inquiry and knowledge. The author, a leading authority and researcher in this area, writes in a clear, accessible manner; yet, his book conveys the tremendous scope and complexity of this burgeoning field. He convincingly links such seemingly disparate areas as linguistics, computer science, cognitive psychology, structural anthropology, and neuroscience, and attempts to integrate both their historical development and underlying approaches to cognition. Recommended for scholars as an introductory text and for informed laypersons who want a thorough and fascinating grounding in the study of the mind and how it works.