Books like Perspectives on thinking, learning, and cognitive styles by Li-fang Zhang

Marvin Minsky presents an interconnected framework that explains human cognition and its implications for artificial intelligence.

1 online resource (322 pages)

“The brain is a computer. With it, we are able to solve, without thinking about it twice, some pretty tough problems. For instance, we can turn the light captured by our eyes into an experience of a friend’s face, or plan our turn in an ongoing conversation with almost the same ease that we predict the course of an apple falling from a tree. What’s more, we are getting quite good at understanding the computations that make those feats of the mind possible. The question now is: can we use this new understanding to improve our lives - or even figure out how to compute happiness? In The HAPPINESS OF PURSUIT, cognition expert Shimon Edelman takes us on a neuroscientific odyssey toward a new level of self-knowledge. Offering an empirical, quantitative understanding of how the brain gives rise to the mind, he shows that the more deeply we grasp how that system works the easier it is to be happy. He describes the computations underlying the mind’s faculties - perception, motivation and emotions, action, memory, thinking, social cognition, learning and language - pondering all the while how and why happiness occurs. As our brains predict the future through experiences, we are rewarded both in real time and in the long run. As inspired by Homer and Philip K. Dick as he is by cognitive science, Edelman takes us on a memorable journey populated with flying marmots and rebellious adolescent mole rats, among other creatures, in an exploration of travel and freedom, memory and desire, thinking and knowing. An expansive work in the tradition of David Deutsch and Douglas Hofstadter, The Happiness of Pursuit stands to be a classic, stretching the limits of our knowledge of our brain - and of ourselves.” BOOK JACKET

Cognitive psychology is a large and expanding area within psychology as a whole. However, there are certain topics, such as perception, memory, language and reasoning, which are generally regarded as being of fundamental importance. It is this central core of cognitive psychology which is the focus of this book. If you have ever wondered how we perceive the world, or use language, or remember information, then this book provides intriguing insights into how we perform these, and other, complicated activities. This book provides an up-to-date approach to cognitive psychology, but with a particular emphasis on accessibility and clarity of style. As a consequence, the book can be read easily by anyone interested in cognitive psychology even if they do not possess any previous knowledge of the subject.