Toward a New Behaviorism by William R. Uttal (9780805827385)

Description - Toward a New Behaviorism by William R. Uttal

The purpose of this volume is to examine the scientific basis of reductionist approaches to understanding visual perception. It is increasingly apparent that - for a variety of reasons - contemporary neuroscience and cognitive science have begun a search for reductionist explanations of perceptual phenomena. This book considers some specific and general examples of this "misdirection", as the author regards it, and suggests an alternative future course. It reviews the successes and failures of the science's efforts to explain perceptual and other mental functions in the terms of either internal cognitive mechanisms, formal models, or the neural structures from which the brain - the organ of the mind - is constructed. Although this is an iconoclastic and minority view, this book shows how many contemporary perceptual scientists have qualified their thinking with regard to what their data and theories mean even while generally accepting the empirical findings. It is, without question, an attempted refutation of some of the primary assumptions of contemporary theory.
Summing up the author's convictions concerning some of the most important questions of human nature, this book is a statement of a point of view that has provided a framework for his personal answers to some of these important questions.

Buy Toward a New Behaviorism by William R. Uttal from Australia's Online Independent Bookstore, BooksDirect.