EBOOK User's Guide to Thought and Meaning

A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning presents a profound and arresting        integration of the faculties of the mind - of how we think, speak, and see the        world.Ray Jackendoff starts out by looking at languages and what the meanings of        words and sentences actually do. He shows that meanings are more adaptive and        complicated than they're commonly given credit for, and he is led to some basic        questions: How do we perceive and act in the world? How do we talk about it? And how        can the collection of neurons in the brain give rise to conscious experience? As it        turns out, the organization of language, thought, and perception does not look much        like the waywe experience things, and only a small part of what the brain does is        conscious. Jackendoff concludes that thought and meaning must be almost completely        unconscious. What we experience as rational conscious thought - which we prize as        setting us apart from the animals - in fact rides on a foundationof unconscious        intuition. Rationality amounts to intuition enhanced by language.Written with an        informality that belies both the originality of its insights and the radical nature        of its conclusions, A User's Guide to Thought and Meaning is the author's most        important book since the groundbreaking Foundations of Language in 2002.