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Towards a Theory of Thinking

Building Blocks for a Conceptual Framework

  • Book
  • © 2010

Overview

Editors:
  1. Britt Glatzeder

    1. Parmenides Foundation, Munich, Germany

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  2. Vinod Goel

    1. Dept. Psychology, York University, Toronto, Canada

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    You can also search for this editor in PubMed   Google Scholar

  3. Albrecht Müller

    1. Parmenides Foundation, Munich, Germany

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  • Presenting a wide-ranging, yet coherent and up-to-date overview on the current scientific study of thinking to a wide readership
  • Written by esteemed experts in the different relevant disciplines - combining conceptual and empirical approaches and data
  • Bringing together the various disciplinary insights providing an integrative multidisciplinary conceptual framework for the study of thinking; experimental data on neural correlates of higher cognition
  • Includes supplementary material: sn.pub/extras

Part of the book series: On Thinking (ONTHINKING)

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Table of contents (23 chapters)

  1. Front Matter

    Pages i-xxix
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  2. Perspectives on Thinking

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 1-1
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    2. Problem Solving

      • Michael Öllinger, Vinod Goel
      Pages 3-21

    3. Heuristic Bias, Conflict, and Rationality in Decision-Making

      • Wim De Neys
      Pages 23-33

    4. Analogical Processes in Human Thinking and Learning

      • Dedre Gentner, Julie Colhoun
      Pages 35-48

    5. A Gestalt Perspective on the Psychology of Thinking

      • Michael Wertheimer
      Pages 49-58

    6. Thought and Reality

      • Albrecht von Müller
      Pages 59-70

  3. Components of Thinking

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 72-72
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    2. Categorization and Object Shape

      • Markus Graf
      Pages 73-101

    3. Comparison

      • Robert L. Goldstone, Sam Day, Ji Y. Son
      Pages 103-121

    4. Causal Thinking

      • Michael R. Waldmann
      Pages 123-134

    5. Conditionals: Their Meaning and Their use in Reasoning

      • Klaus Oberauer
      Pages 135-146

    6. Thinking and Memory

      • Matthias Brand, Hans J. Markowitsch
      Pages 147-160

    7. Perception and the Brain

      • Nikos Logothetis
      Pages 161-175

  4. Onto- and Phylogenetic Considerations

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 178-178
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    2. A Developmental Perspective on Modularity

      • Annette Karmiloff-Smith
      Pages 179-187

    3. Theory of Mind

      • Beate Sodian, Susanne Kristen
      Pages 189-201

    4. The Development of Metacognitive Competences

      • Wolfgang Schneider
      Pages 203-214

    5. Understanding Apes to Understand Humans: The Case of Object-Object Relations

      • Josep Call
      Pages 215-230

  5. Language, Emotion, Culture

    1. Front Matter

      Pages 233-233
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Keywords

About this book

What is Thinking? – Trying to Define an Equally Fascinating and Elusive Phenomenon Human thinking is probably the most complex phenomenon that evolution has come up with until now. There exists a broad spectrum of definitions, from subs- ing almost all processes of cognition to limiting it to language-based, sometimes even only to formalizable reasoning processes. We work with a “medium sized” definition according to which thinking encompasses all operations by which cog- tive agents link mental content in order to gain new insights or perspectives. Mental content is, thus, a prerequisite for and the substrate on which thinking operations are executed. The largely unconscious acts of perceptual object stabilization, ca- gorization, emotional evaluation – and retrieving all the above from memory inscriptions – are the processes by which mental content is generated, and are, therefore, seen as prerequisites for thinking operations. In terms of a differentia specifica, the notion of “thinking” is seen as narrower than the notion of “cognition” and as wider than the notion of “reasoning”. Thinking is, thus, seen as a subset of cognition processes; and reasoning processes are seen as a subset of thinking. Besides reasoning, the notion of thinking includes also nonexplicit, intuitive, and associative processes of linking mental content. According to this definition, thinking is not dependant on language, i. e. also many animals and certainly all mammals show early forms of thinking.

Editors and Affiliations

  • Parmenides Foundation, Munich, Germany

    Britt Glatzeder, Albrecht Müller

  • Dept. Psychology, York University, Toronto, Canada

    Vinod Goel

Bibliographic Information

  • Book Title: Towards a Theory of Thinking

  • Book Subtitle: Building Blocks for a Conceptual Framework

  • Editors: Britt Glatzeder, Vinod Goel, Albrecht Müller

  • Series Title: On Thinking

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-03129-8

  • Publisher: Springer Berlin, Heidelberg

  • eBook Packages: Biomedical and Life Sciences, Biomedical and Life Sciences (R0)

  • Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer-Verlag GmbH, DE, part of Springer Nature 2010

  • Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-642-03128-1Published: 26 February 2010

  • Softcover ISBN: 978-3-642-26251-7Published: 04 May 2012

  • eBook ISBN: 978-3-642-03129-8Published: 20 March 2010

  • Series ISSN: 1867-4208

  • Series E-ISSN: 1867-4216

  • Edition Number: 1

  • Number of Pages: XIV, 380

  • Number of Illustrations: 42 b/w illustrations, 16 illustrations in colour

  • Topics: Cognitive Psychology, Neurobiology, Anthropology, Neurosciences

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