Eleanor Rosch

Biographic Data

ID108728
NAMEEleanor Rosch
GIVEN NAMESEleanor
FAMILY NAMERosch
SIGNATUREROSCH E
AFFILIATIONSUniversity of California, Berkeley
VERIFIEDNo
TOTAL WORKS27
TOTAL CITATIONS1077
AUTHOR COUNT27
EDITOR COUNT0
FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR1973
LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR2017
H-INDEX5

  • Evolutionary Path Making and Natural Drift

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter demonstrates how unique histories of structural coupling can be understood from the vantage point of evolution. To this end, it provides a critique of the adaptationist view of evolution as a process of progressive fitness, and articulates an alternative view of evolution as natural drift. These unique histories of coupling, which enact incommensurable kinds of “color space,” should not be explained as optimal adaptations to differen…

  • A Fundamental Circularity: In the Mind of the Reflective Scientist

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter describes cognitive science. In its widest sense, the term cognitive science is used to indicate that the study of mind is in itself a worthy scientific pursuit. At this time, cognitive science is not yet established as a mature science. It does not have a clearly agreed upon sense of direction and a large number of researchers constituting a community. Rather, it is really more of a loose affiliation of disciplines than a discipline…

  • Selfless Minds

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter looks at Marvin Minsky's and Seymour Papert's recent proposal to study the mind as a society, which takes the patchwork architecture of cognition as a central element. Minsky and Papert present a view in which minds consist of many “agents” whose abilities are quite circumscribed: each agent taken individually operates only in a microworld of small-scale or “toy” problems. This model of the mind as a society of numerous agents is int…

  • The Middle Way

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter argues that contemporary Western views have been unable to articulate together the loss of foundations for the self and for the world. There is no methodological basis for a middle way between objectivism and subjectivism (both forms of absolutism). In cognitive science and in experimental psychology, the fragmentation of the self occurs because the field is trying to be scientifically objective. Precisely because the self is taken a…

  • What Do We Mean “Human Experience”?

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter examines human experience. It is necessary to have a disciplined perspective on human experience that can enlarge the domain of cognitive science to include direct experience. Such a perspective already exists in the form of mindfulness/awareness meditation. Mindfulness/awareness practice, phenomenological philosophy, and science are human activities; each is an expression of human embodiment. The chapter then looks at the Buddhist m…

  • The I of the Storm

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter discusses the self. The tension between the ongoing sense of self in ordinary experience and the failure to find that self in reflection is of central importance in Buddhism—the origin of human suffering is just this tendency to grasp onto and build a sense of self, an ego, where there is none. As meditators catch glimpses of impermanence, selflessness, and suffering, and some inkling that the pervasiveness of suffering may have its …

  • Introduction to the Revised Edition

    Eleanor RoschOTHERThe Embodied Mind2017

  • The Cartesian Anxiety

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter examines directly the feeling that arises when one senses that one can no longer trust the world as a fixed and stable reference point. The nervousness that one feels is rooted in “the Cartesian anxiety.” The anxiety is best put as a dilemma: either one has a fixed and stable foundation for knowledge, or one cannot escape some sort of darkness, chaos, and confusion. Ultimately, this feeling of anxiety arises from the craving for an a…

  • Emergent Properties and Connectionism

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter analyzes connectionism. In this alternative orientation in cognitive science, the brain has once more become the main source of metaphors and ideas. Theories and models no longer begin with abstract symbolic descriptions but with a whole army of neural-like, simple, unintelligent components, which, when appropriately connected, have interesting global properties. These global properties embody and express the cognitive capacities bei…

  • Enaction: Embodied Cognition

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter explains embodied action. The term embodied highlights two points: first, that cognition depends upon the kinds of experience that come from having a body with various sensorimotor capacities, and second, that these individual sensorimotor capacities are themselves embedded in a more encompassing biological, psychological, and cultural context. The term action emphasizes that sensory and motor processes, perception and action, are fu…

  • Laying Down a Path in Walking

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This concluding chapter examines some of the ethical dimensions of groundlessness in relation to the concern with nihilism that is typical of much post-Nietzschean thought. In the humanities—in art, literature, and philosophy—the growing awareness of groundlessness has taken form not through a confrontation with objectivism but rather with nihilism, skepticism, and extreme relativism. Indeed, this concern with nihilism is typical of late-twentiet…

  • Symbols: The Cognitivist Hypothesis

    Francisco J Varela, E Thompson et al.CHAPTERThe embodied mind2017

    This chapter explores cognitivism and the cognitivist hypothesis. The central intuition behind cognitivism is that intelligence—human intelligence included—so resembles computation in its essential characteristics that cognition can actually be defined as computations of symbolic representations. The cognitivist argument is that intelligent behavior presupposes the ability to represent the world as being certain ways. Another cognitivist claim is…

  • The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience

    Francisco J Varela, Evan Thompson et al.BOOKThe embodied mind2017Cited by: 88

    A new edition of a classic work that originated the “embodied cognition” movement and was one of the first to link science and Buddhist practices. This classic book, first published in 1991, was one of the first to propose the “embodied cognition” approach in cognitive science. It pioneered the connections between phenomenology and science and between Buddhist practices and science—claims that have since become highly influential. Through this cr…

  • Toward an Ecological Theory of Concepts

    Liane Gabora, Eleanor Rosch et al.ARTICLEEcological Psychology2008

    Psychology has had difficulty accounting for the creative, context-sensitive manner in which concepts are used. We believe this stems from the view of concepts as identifiers rather than bridges between mind and world that participate in the generation of meaning. This article summarizes the history and current status of concepts research and provides a nontechnical summary of work toward an ecological approach to concepts. We outline the rationa…

  • If You Depict a Bird, Give it Space to Fly: Eastern Psychologies, the Arts, and Self-Knowledge

    Eleanor RoschARTICLESubStance2001

    SubStance - Issue 94/95 (Volume 30, Number 1&2), 2001

  • If Your Depict a Bird, Give It Space to Fly: Eastern Psychologies, the Arts, and Self-Knowledge

    Eleanor RoschARTICLESubStance2001

    Eleanor Rosch, "If Your Depict a Bird, Give It Space to Fly": Eastern Psychologies, the Arts, and Self-Knowledge, SubStance, Vol. 30, No. 1/2, Issue 94/95: Special Issue: On the Origin of Fictions: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2001), pp. 236-253

  • Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience

    Simon Penny, Francisco J Varela et al.ARTICLELeonardo1995

  • The Embodied Mind: Cognitive Science and Human Experience

    Francisco J Varela, Eleanor Rosch et al.BOOKThe Embodied Mind1991Cited by: 591

    The Embodied Mind provides a unique, sophisticated treatment of the spontaneous and reflective dimension of human experience. The authors argue that only by having a sense of common ground between mind in Science and mind in experience can our understanding of cognition be more complete. Toward that end, they develop a dialogue between cognitive science and Buddhist meditative psychology and situate it in relation to other traditions such as phen…

  • Categorization of Natural Objects

    Carolyn Β Mervis, C B Mervis et al.ARTICLEAnnual Review of Psychology1981Cited by: 170References: 3

    A revolution in the science of emotion has emerged in recent decades, with the potential to create a paradigm shift in decision theories. The research reveals that emotions constitute potent, pervasive, predictable, sometimes harmful and sometimes ...Read More

  • Basic objects in natural categories

    Open AccessEleanor Rosch, Carolyn B Mervis et al.ARTICLECognitive Psychology1976

  • Cross‐Cultural Universale of Affective Meaning. Charles E. Osgood, William H. May , and Murray S. Miron

    Open AccessEleanor RoschARTICLEAmerican Anthropologist1976

  • Cognitive reference points

    Open AccessEleanor RoschARTICLECognitive Psychology1975

  • Cognitive representations of semantic categories.

    Eleanor RoschARTICLEJournal of Experimental…1975

  • Family resemblances: Studies in the internal structure of categories

    Open AccessEleanor Rosch, Carolyn B Mervis et al.ARTICLECognitive Psychology1975

  • Development of the structure of color categories

    Carolyn B Mervis, Carolyn Β Mervis et al.ARTICLEDevelopmental Psychology1975Cited by: 6References: 3