History and Theories of the Mind - Neurocognitive Development and Impairments

Összefoglaló

The history of cognitive science in a combination with a history of psychology is essential to understand the nature of multisdiciplinarity approaches to human cognition. This collection of essays intends to provide the reader with a rich image to understand cognition both from a conceptual, a historical and a social way.
Several unifying ideas characterize these efforts. First of all, the papers indicate that many of the present day issues of cognitive research have been articulated in late 19th Century, in the early days of psychology as an independent discipline. Papers on Helmholtz. Mach, Mill all raise this continuity issue. A second important unifying idea is the importance of classical and present day evolutionary ideas, and their relationships'. Essays on comparing Mach and Dennett, on Dawkins and Sperber, as well as on Karl Popper show the centrality of evolutionary ideas to understand recent cognitive research. A third central topic is the relevance of classical social theories of mind such as Wittgenstein or Halbwachs to the present day discussion of the societal aspect of cognition and the potential impact of contemporary social changes on cognitive architecture. This is accompanied by a special consideration of narrative theories of the self and the mind.
Finally, a special chapter covers historical excursion to the history of Hungarian psychology and the lessons we can learn from this regarding the peculiarities of psychology during great political and social turmoils.
The book is interesting reading for cognitive scientists, for historians of psychology and biology, for philosophers, and for thoreticians of narrative psychology as well.