Secondly, the book achieves a breakthrough in the study of reasoning. It elucidates the role of background or contextual information in spontaneous inference, and offers an analysis of non-demonstrative inference processes. It directly challenges recent claims that human central thought processes are likely to remain a mystery for some time to come.
Thirdly, the authors offer new insight into language and literature, radically revising current views on the nature and goals of verbal comprehension, and in particular on metaphor, irony, style, speech acts, presupposition and implicature. Sperber and Wilson’s writings on relevance theory are already influencing work in a wide variety of fields, including artificial intelligence and computer science.
This book will be read by all those with an interest in the impact of the cognitive revolution on our understanding of culture. The controversial ideas it presents will be widely discussed and debated by cognitive scientists, social scientists and philosophers.
Included in this volume is a very high-quality cast of contributors including philosophers Daniel Dennett, Alvin Goldman, Keith Lehrer, evolutionary psychologist Leda Cosmides, and anthropologist John Tooby. Metarepresentation will appeal to the interdisciplinary field of cognitive scientists including philosophers, psychologists, linguists, and computer scientists.