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.

Explanation and Cognition (Bradford Books) PDF

The list of books you might like