The Structure of Thinking A process-oriented account of mind Laura E. Weed January 2003, 250 pages ISBN 0 907845 274 (hardback), $49.90/£30.00 Search Inside the Book at Amazon.com Search Inside the Book at Amazon.co.uk  Secure ordering "Some of the clearest and most compelling thinking on the subject of thought"   Philosophy Now "Overall, this is a rich and intriguing treatment of a difficult subject.  Weed's criticism of the reductivist program is especially worth reading, and she deserves credit for offering her own solution to the grounding problem.  Readers interested in the re-integration of consciousness and cognition would find much here of interest."  Metapsychology

Analytic philosophers and cognitive scientists have long argued that the mind is a computer-like syntactical engine, and that all human mental capacities can be described as digital computational processes. This book presents an alternative, naturalistic view of human thinking, arguing that computers are merely sophisticated machines. Computers are only simulating thought when they crunch symbols, not thinking. Human cognition—semantics, de re reference, indexicals, meaning and causation—are all rooted in human experience and life. Without life and experience, these elements of discourse and knowledge refer to nothing. And without these elements of discourse and knowledge, syntax is vacant structure, not thinking.

Laura Weed teaches in the Department of Philosophy, College of Saint Rose