This book is a selection from the articles that I have written over a period of more than twenty years. Since the focus of my research interests has shifted several times during this period, it would be difficult to identify a common theme for all the papers in the volume. Following the Swedish tradition, I therefore present this as a smörgåsbord of philosophical and cognitive issues that I have worked on. To create some order, I have organized the sixteen papers into five general sections: (1) Decision theory; (2) belief revision and nonmonotonic logic; (3) induction; (4) semantics and pragmatics; and (5) cognition and evolution. Having said this, I still think that there is a common theme to my work over the years: The dynamics of thought. My academic interests have all the time dealt with aspects of how different kinds of knowledge should be represented, and, in particular, how changes in knowledge will affect thinking. Hence the title of the book.

First published in 1999.This is Volume XXX of thirty-two in the Developmental Psychology series. Written in 1932, this book is an effort to present both the meaning and process of education in a new and truer light. The word dynamics in the title suggests the point of view as the author offers a methodology of progressive educational thought in the area of education.

"This book describes a new theoretical approach--Dynamic Field Theory (DFT)--that explains how people think and act"--

This volume presents a collection of essays that all share a common concern with time, process and consciousness. The chapters represent a variety of different perspectives and the authors span the disciplines of psychology, mathematics, physics and psychiatry.

Brian Skyrms constructs a theory of "dynamic deliberation" and uses it to investigate rational decisionmaking in cases of strategic interaction. This illuminating book will be of great interest to all those in many disciplines who use decision theory and game theory to study human behavior and thought. Skyrms begins by discussing the Bayesian theory of individual rational decision and the classical theory of games, which at first glance seem antithetical in the criteria used for determining action. In his effort to show how methods for dealing with information feedback can be productively combined, the author skillfully leads us through the mazes of equilibrium selection, the Nash equilibria for normal and extensive forms, structural stability, causal decision theory, dynamic probability, the revision of beliefs, and, finally, good habits for decision. The author provides many clarifying illustrations and a handy appendix called "Deliberational Dynamics on Your Personal Computer." His powerful model has important implications for understanding the rational origins of convention and the social contract, the logic of nuclear deterrence, the theory of good habits, and the varied strategies of political and economic behavior.

The importance of the rich corpus of “Masters Literature” that developed in early China since the fifth century BCE has long been recognized. But just what are these texts? Scholars have often approached them as philosophy, but these writings have also been studied as literature, history, and anthropological, religious, and paleographic records. How should we translate these texts for our times? This book explores these questions through close readings of seven examples of Masters Literature and asks what proponents of a “Chinese philosophy” gained by creating a Chinese equivalent of philosophy and what we might gain by approaching these texts through other disciplines, questions, and concerns. What happens when we remove the accrued disciplinary and conceptual baggage from the Masters Texts? What neglected problems, concepts, and strategies come to light? And can those concepts and strategies help us see the history of philosophy in a different light and engender new approaches to philosophical and intellectual inquiry? By historicizing the notion of Chinese philosophy, we can, the author contends, answer not only the question of whether there is a Chinese philosophy but also the more interesting question of the future of philosophical thought around the world.

Why do some marriages grow stronger in the face of conflict or stress while others dissolve? In this book, two pioneering researchers present a groundbreaking theory of how mutually responsive behaviors emerge—or fail to emerge—in relationships. Illustrating their findings through the vivid stories of four diverse couples, the authors explore how conscious considerations interact with unconscious impulses to foster trust and commitment. Compelling topics include why marriages have such different personalities and what makes partners truly compatible. Also discussed are implications of the model for helping couples sustain satisfying relationships and improve troubled ones.

Toward a computational explanation of thought: an argument that underlying mind is a complex but compact program that corresponds to the underlying complex structure of the world.

What is the difference between a wink and a blink? The answer is important not only to philosophers of mind, for significant moral and legal consequences rest on the distinction between voluntary and involuntary behavior. However, "action theory"—the branch of philosophy that has traditionally articulated the boundaries between action and non-action, and between voluntary and involuntary behavior—has been unable to account for the difference. Alicia Juarrero argues that a mistaken, 350-year-old model of cause and explanation—one that takes all causes to be of the push-pull, efficient cause sort, and all explanation to be prooflike—underlies contemporary theories of action. Juarrero then proposes a new framework for conceptualizing causes based on complex adaptive systems. Thinking of causes as dynamical constraints makes bottom-up and top-down causal relations, including those involving intentional causes, suddenly tractable. A different logic for explaining actions—as historical narrative, not inference—follows if one adopts this novel approach to long-standing questions of action and responsibility.

This edited volume provides a venue for scholars whose work challenges the typical, static conceptions, and methods of studying creativity. More specifically, the book will serve as an effort to introduce more dynamic definitions, conceptions, and approaches for studying creativity in the context of educational practice. By doing so, it feeds the strong contemporary need for more dynamic conceptions of creativity in educational settings. This is particularly important given the fast evolution of modern society and the widespread consensus that efforts to develop creative potential should be democratized -- extending well beyond the boundaries of the gifted subset and the walls of the classroom. This work recognizes that more dynamic perspectives on creativity are necessary for understanding its complexity, value, and meaning in educational contexts.