LINGUIST List 14.1207

Tue Apr 29 2003

Books: Cognitive Science: Modell

Editor for this issue: Marisa Ferrara <marisalinguistlist.org>

Directory

1. dgw, Imagination and the Meaningful Brain: Modell

			
Title: Imagination and the Meaningful Brain
Series Title: Bradford Books
			
Publication Year: 2003
Publisher: MIT Press
 http://mitpress.mit.edu/
			
Availability: Available
 
Author: Arnold H. Modell				

Hardback: ISBN: 026213425X, Pages: 272, Price: $32

Abstract:
			
The ultimate goal of the cognitive sciences is to understand how the
brain works--how it turns "matter into imagination." In Imagination
and the Meaningful Brain, psychoanalyst Arnold Modell claims that
subjective human experience must be included in any scientific
explanation of how the mind/brain works. Contrary to current attempts
to describe mental functioning as a form of computation, his view is
that the construction of meaning is not the same as information
processing. The intrapsychic complexities of human psychology, as
observed through introspection and empathic knowledge of other minds,
must be added to the third-person perspective of cognitive psychology
and neuroscience.

Assuming that other mammals are conscious and conscious of their
feelings, Modell emphasizes evolutionary continuities and
discontinuities of emotion. The limbic system, the emotional brain, is
of ancient origin, but only humans have the capacity for generative
imagination. By means of metaphor, we are able to interpret, displace,
and transform our feelings. To bolster his arugment, Modell draws on a
variety of disciplines--including psychoanalysis, cognitive
psychology, neurobiology, evolutionary biology, linguistics,
philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. Only by integrating
the objectivity of neuroscience, the phenomenology of introspection,
and the intersubjective knowledge of psychoanalysis, he claims, will
we be able fully to understand how the mind works.

Arnold H. Modell is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard
Medical School.
			
Lingfield(s): Cognitive Science

Written In: English (Language Code: English)

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