Philosophy of Psychology

José Luis Bermúdez introduces the philosophy of psychology as an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature and mechanisms of cognition. Philosophy of Psychology charts out four influential 'pictures of the mind' and uses them to explore central topics in the philosophical foundations of psychology, including the relation between different levels of studying the mind/brain; the nature and scope of psychological explanation; the architecture of cognition; and the relation between thought and language. Chapters cover all the core concepts, including:models of psychological explanationthe nature of commonsense psychologyarguments for the autonomy of psychologyfunctionalist approaches to cognitioncomputational models of the mindneural network modelingrationality and mental causationperception, action and cognitionthe language of thought and the architecture of cognition.Philosophy of Psychology: A Contemporary Introduction is a very clear and well-structured textbook from one of the leaders in the field.