What is human nature? How is language related to thought - and should the connection be investigated socially or biologically? Is external reality coherent or fragmented? What, if any, are the foundations of rationality, and how trustworthy are they?

Such questions have bedevilled thinkers for millenia. Contem­porary scholars have harnessed enormous resources to find answers, yet their inquiry is invariably constrained by the tunnel vision of academic specialisation.

This issue of The Dolphin seeks to establish common ground among the disciplines examining the mind-brain continuum. Among those meeting the editors' challenge to think outside the disciplinary box are Noam Chomsky, John Searle and Steven Pinker, as well as almost a dozen other important scholars from the fields of neuroscience, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive science, literature, computer science and ethnography.

The implicit framework that results should help researchers in all fields locate the diversity of human knowing within a joint ontological perspective.