The William James Lectures

After reviewing foundational concepts of cognitive science Newell introduces Soar, an architecture for general cognition. A pioneer system in artificial intelligence, Soar is the first problem-solver to create its own subgoals and learn continuously from its own experience. Soar’s ability to operate within the real-time constraints of intelligent behavior illustrates important characteristics of the human cognitive structure.

Dummett regards the construction of a satisfactory theory of meaning as the most pressing task of contemporary analytical philosophy. He believes that the successful completion of this difficult assignment will lead to a resolution of problems before which philosophy has been stalled, in some instances for centuries.

From later antiquity to the close of the 18th century, most educated men accepted without question a traditional view of the plan and structure of the world. In this volume, Lovejoy copiously illustrates the influence of this conception, and of the ideas out of which it was compounded, upon the imagination and feelings as expressed in literature.

John L. Austin was one of the leading philosophers of the twentieth century. The William James Lectures presented Austin’s conclusions in the field to which he directed his main efforts on a wide variety of philosophical problems. These talks became the classic How to Do Things with Words.