The Neural Mind: How Brains Think

The Neural Mind: How Brains Think - Hardcover

$35.00
$35.00
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The Neural Mind: How Brains Think
  • The Neural Mind: How Brains Think
The Neural Mind: How Brains Think - Hardcover

The Neural Mind: How Brains Think - Hardcover

by George Lakoff , Srini Narayanan
$35.00
$35.00

Book Overview

Offers an expansive, unified theory of thought that brings together the vast resources of neuroscience, computation, and cognitive linguistics.

What is an idea, and where does it come from? We experience thought as if it were abstract, but every thought is actually a physical thing, carried out by the neural systems of our brains. Thought does not occur neuron-by-neuron; it happens when neurons come together to form circuits and when simple circuits combine to form complex ones. Thoughts, then, derive their structures from the circuitry we also use for vision, touch, and hearing. This circuitry is what allows simple thoughts to come together into complex concepts, making meaning, creating metaphors, and framing our social and political ideas.

With The Neural Mind, George Lakoff, a pioneering cognitive linguist, and computer scientist Srini Narayanan deftly combine insights from cognitive science, computational modeling, and linguistics to show how thoughts arise from the neural circuitry that runs throughout our bodies. They answer key questions about the ways we make meaning: How does neural circuitry create the conceptual "frames" through which we understand our social lives? What kind of neural circuitry characterizes metaphorical thought, in which ideas are understood in terms of other ideas with similar structures? Lively and accessible, the book shows convincingly that the "metaphors we live by"--to use Lakoff's famous phrase--aren't abstractions but deeply embodied neural constructs.

The Neural Mind is the first book of its kind, bringing together the ideas of multiple disciplines to offer a unified, accessible theory of thought. A field-defining work, Lakoff and Narayanan's book will be of interest not just to linguists and cognitive scientists but also to psychologists, philosophers, anthropologists, journalists, sociologists, and political scientists--and anyone who wants to understand how we really think.
ISBN9780226835884
Author George Lakoff , Srini Narayanan
PublisherUniversity of Chicago Press
GenreEducation and Self-help & personal development
FormatHardcover
PublishedJune 2025
LanguageENG- English
Pages384
Weight1.0 lb
Target AudienceAdults
Print SizeStandard Print

Related Subjects

Language Arts & Disciplines Nonfiction Psychology Science

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About George Lakoff
George Lakoff is a professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author of, among other books, Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things and Moral Politics, both published by the University of Chicago Press. Mark Johnson is the Knight Professor of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Oregon. He is the author of The Body in the Mind and Moral Imagination, both published by the University of Chicago Press. Johnson and Lakoff have also coauthored Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and its Challenge to Western Thought.
About Srini Narayanan
George Lakoff is professor emeritus of cognitive science and linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. He is the author or coauthor of numerous books, including Metaphors We Live By, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Srini Narayanan is distinguished scientist and senior research director at Google DeepMind, Zurich, where he leads a research group on machine learning and natural language processing. Until 2014, he was director of the International Computer Science Institute, a core faculty member in the Cognitive Science Program, and a faculty member at the Institute for Brain and Cognitive Sciences, all at the University of California, Berkeley, where he was also a cofounder of the Berkeley Neural Theory of Language group.

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