Bradford Books

Anyone who can help me get this book, please email me wr1230_99@hotmail.com
THANKS A LOT!

Well written workbook for the interested general reader to gain an understanding of neural networks. Although some workbooks come with neural network simulator software for a personal computer (mine did not, and I was unable to evaluate the simulator), the printed workbook itself is extremely interactive and has the reader work through simulations of simple neural networks. This workbook covers the perceptron, minimum error learning, Hebbian learning, competitive learning, attractor networks (single layer, double layer and statistical), and back propagation networks.

Don't waste your money. This isn't a bad text, in terms of explaining the theory, but it includes a 3.5" floppy disk that is so old my computer couldn't even read the files. It's not worth the money without the software. The author does not appear to have published any related work in the last four or five years, and I have not found any pointers to updated software on the Web (probably because the book predates the web). I guess this might make a good museum item, if you don't take the cellophane off it.

A fairly good text in terms of explanation of theory and so on, but the accompanying disk contains neural network simulation software that is six or eight years old. I bought the Macintosh version, and I couldn't even read some of the files (either because the file format was ancient or because the floppy disk was so old the files had been corrupted by ambient radiation). I had to dig out my old PowerBook so I had a floppy disk drive to use. Big surprise - I bought it in a bookstore and the publication date was not displayed on the outside of the cellophane wrapped package.

This work is astounding in its profound ignorance not only of contemporary psychoanalysis, but of psychoanaytic developments in the last half of the 20th century (and also of much of contemporary neurobiology). The arrogance here is amazing -- to write a book without even attempting to familiarize oneself with th subject matter; but, we must ask, where is this arroagnce coming from? I believe Kitcher well demonstrate the law, "Academics moves toward the trendy, occasionally errs, self-corrects and moves again toward the trendy."

This excellent book is both an interesting discussion of Freud's research program and an illustrative example for one who wishes to understand contemporary cognitive science. Kitcher is both sympathetic and critical to Freud --- this is sure to bother both die-hard Freudians and die-hard anti-Freudians. Highly recommended!

This book purports to show Freud's errors in constructing an interdisciplinary science. The author has some respect for Freud because his example has shown why cognitive science must be interdisciplinary; but as most of the disciplines he borrows from have progressed immensely in this century, the overall structure of psychoanlytic theory has come to ruins. Hence the dangers inherent in any interdisciplinary science. This argument would have been somewhat interesting, had the author actually possessed any knowledge of any of the disciplines involved. But she doesn't, and her book fails miserably. Above all there is the assumption that if modern researchers disagree with freud on any point whatsoever, they must be right and Freud wrong. Then the author claims that there is a general agreement on what Freud actually said, because he writes more clearly than Kant. Well, she really hasn't read much of the relevant literature. The disagreement on what Freud actually said is so astonishing as to have no parallel in the history of thought. Kant is relatively easy compared to Freud because his writings can be deciphered once one has learned to read bad German. Freud does not present a great deal of surface difficulty; the difficulty lies in actually thinking with him. And lastly, relying on people like Ellenberger or Sulloway is very problematic. Has the author read any of the refutations? Did she simply ignore them? Does she even know anything about modern research in neuroscience and psychology, beyond, say, the Churchlands? What about Kosslyn? LeDoux? Kandel? Alkon? Edelman? Lakoff? Changeux? I would recommend the books of all of these authors as an introductory course on how to read Freud in the context of cognitive science.

The ideas Dennett raises are (inevitably) very interesting, as we are talking about the brain, so there is lot of material here to keep you thinking. A lot of the arguments he makes don't exactly make sense (i.e. comparisons that don't apply), but his is a voice worth considering.

I must give credit to Dennett for trying very hard to make his ideas clear, because he does a better job than most philosophers, but the book is still a bit boring.

Lots of useful info, I guess.
It is not what I expected.

Every county is listed. What industries, how many people, what kind of government. Ho Hum.

More like a Colorado Civics book than a book that would provide me any incentive to move there.

Where are the pictures? Colorado has such a variety of geographical landscapes, it would be nice to see an example of each region. Mountains? hills? flat? what?

What about school scores? I really would be intrested in that. How many kids go to college? What are their average SAT scores? That would significantly impact where I moved if I wanted to move.

Small business concerns are mentioned a bit, but a more thorough coverage would be handy.

If I am thinking about moving to Colorado, what do I need to know:
1. I am probably bringing my business there -OR- going to need a job. (I need employment data and small business data)
2.I am going to bring my family (real estate prices, common sizes of properties, school INFO!)

3. Weather (Covered!)
4. Geography (hmmmm not enough)
5. Entertainment (Is it an average of 50 miles to the nearest town with a theatre?)

Anyway. The author would do well to get a welcome packet from a Realtor. Those may be more handy.

I've lived in colorado over 12-years, and this book would have been a great help when I first moved here. And now as a current resident, I see several parts of the book that can still be helpful to me. The 12-chapters include info. on moving tips, Colorado history, schools, taxes, motor vehicles, business start-up info. & high altitude living. This book would be a great resource for any one recently moved to Colorado, or planning to move there.

I just came across the ludicrous review by cck. It is riddled with errors and often gets my views exactly backward. Hopefully readers will have a look at the book and judge for themselves.

(Please ignore the 4 star rating above. I had to fill in something in order to get my reply posted.)

I apologize if I misunderstood it (and it has been some time since I read it) but Raffman's book seemed to build upon some questionable and shaky initial assumptions, and some over-generalizations or mis-characterizations of prior work (e.g. Goodman, and Lerdahl-Jackendoff).

The point that I would get from her book, which I don't think is quite the one she intended, is that IF you restrict yourself to considering music based on the Western 12-note equal-tempered "classical" (e.g. "grammatical" a la Lerdahl-Jackendoff) pitch system, and IF you restrict yourself to musical scores which are only notated in terms of those 12 pitches and the classical grammar, and IF you restrict yourself to only listeners and performers who also have restricted themselves to those same 12 pitches and the classical grammar, THEN you can say that anything else, variations in those pitches or exceptions to the grammar, etc., is "ineffable".

But that just seems like a tautology, e.g. if you restrict yourself to only using the 2 words "white" and "black", then of course you cannot describe any colors!

There are many many people who have learned to perceive and reproduce other intervals, besides the Western equal-tempered dodecaphonic semitone, and who have become quite comfortable with music that does not conform at all to Lerdahl-Jackendoff's grammar. In fact I believe that the music she considers as her entire universe is a very small subset of the music that has been made over the course of human history.

So for any listener of any music outside that limited universe, the same nuances that Raffman calls "ineffable" would perhaps be easy to describe, if those nuances fell into categories that they recognized.

This appears to disprove Raffman's whole thesis, unless I misunderstand it. If she acknowledged the restricted universe she was operating in, that would be different (unless I missed such an acknowledgement?). My impression was that she tried to generalize, to all listeners with all possible experience and training.

On the other hand, she did introduce me to an idea which IS potentially interesting, if one considers the broader implications beyond her narrow application of it. Roughly speaking, this is Goodman's notion that if you only have a ruler with finite measured markings on it, then you can't precisely measure in the spaces between the markings. You can add more markings, but there will always be spaces in between. Mathematically this is just the notion that there are different kinds of infinity, i.e. countable rational numbers, and uncountable real numbers in between them. Of course you cannot "count" the "uncountable"; this was proved a long time ago by Cantor (?) with a "diagonalization" proof.

So I would be more comfortable with Raffman's approach if she considered it in this abstract sense, that the Western 12-tone equal-tempered classical grammar is only one of many possible "rulers" (counting systems) with only one of many possible sets of measured marks.

But then the whole point seems too obvious (you can't count things, if they fall in between the indices you use to count them), so again I must be missing something -- if so, I apologize.

But being involved in communities of electro-acoustic musicians and composers, who have worked for years on ways to "effably" describe the nuances in sounds that are NOT based on the system that Raffman takes as a given assumption, I was disappointed in her work.

Even Fred Lerdahl himself once suggested to me that he wasn't so sure of the applicability of the grammatical approach to musical analysis that he derived with Jackendoff. Again, it only works for a very restricted universe of possible musical gestures and intervals, and perhaps this restriction is too severe to be useful anywhere beyond a purely academic discussion.

Had the previous reviewer bothered to read the preface to this text, he would have found that the book was meant to be used with an instructor: the first two sentences read, "The most important thing for you to know about this book is that it is designed to be used with a teacher. You should not expect to learn logic from this book alone..."

Contra the previous review, I found this textbook to be tremendously helpful. I was fortunate enough to study with Dr. Bill Robinson, who worked hard to insure that his lectures adequately explained the material: the book complemented that instruction. If I needed to refer back for the formal definition of a term or rule, I had the book to rely on. The definitions were clearly worded, and made plain sense (when coupled with the high level of classroom instruction) and the examples and exercises were helpful for understanding and practice. Step-by-step solutions were given at the back of the book for selected problems. In short, this text provided a useful complement to the fine instruction I received in symbolic logic, and, when properly used in concert with such instruction, should provide any beginning practioner of symbolic logic the tools he needs to begin to his foray into the world of logic.

The book is set up to be nothing more than a guide to the terminology of logic. The examples are scarce and for most people in the class, including me, which used this book were lost. The lecturer had to hold our hands through the whole course. If you had a question, look in the book and feel even more lost. It does give good definitions for the terms but has little in the way of practical application. The exercises would have been more helpful if they had given a step-by-step example of how they are solved. This only occurred at the beginning of the book as I guess the authors assumed that you would have it down after chapter 2. This also might have been a failing of my comprehension as I was told that once you have the formulas down then you can apply them to anything. I doubt that since our tests in this class were curved 30 points. I do not know that there are other books out there to cover this topic but I wish there was. In short, unless you already are an advanced student of philosophy or logic this book will be nothing more than alphabet soup.

I love to read -- and I love to read books about Organization Development. This one has more of a text book feel which wasn't really what I expected. Honestly, I didn't get very far in the book -- maybe only into the second chapter and I was bored. I don't mean to be rude, but it just wasn't what I was looking for. It sounded like a lot of whining -- trying to figure out how to gain respect for Organization Development consultants rather than an educational book about the subject matter. Since I was reading it for pleasure, I stopped reading it... and bought a different book. I considered asking for a refund, but it's not the seller's fault that I didn't like the book that I'd purchased. Anyone want my copy?

As someone who has been practicing Organizational Development for the past 20 years, I have felt like I have been in a declining profession. This book taps the knowledge and insight of top thinkers in the field and tells us why this is happening. There analysis is right on the money. People who practice and believe in OD may find the authors conclusions depressing, but I would rather know what the reality of the situation is and build from there. This is an important book for launching the dialoge about our "at-risk" profession.

I thought this manual is a great resource for anyone who has the time and wants to put effort into this class. It offers a summary of each chapter, fill-in the blanks exercises, as well as problems for each of the chapters from the textbook. These problems are less challenging than the ones in the actual textbook, but they have answers which I thought was most helpful.
If your teacher explains the chapters pretty well, you could just get this student problem manual instead of the textbook and be fine.

Student Problem Manual is an old edition and not compatible with Fundamentals of Corporate Finance 8th ed. This product was not advertised as "6th edition" but should have been in order to avoid confusion and dissatisfaction.

I haven't time just now to tell you the role Fodor's theory of content plays in The Grand Fodorian Scheme. But rest assured, it's important. The end-point of Fodor 1965-1980 was a truly complicated theory of mind with a crucial missing piece: a theory of content. When you believe that "the dog is barking", what is it about the stuff inside your head that makes that stuff a belief of this nature. Two papers on this subject are here.

Of particular interest to me are two papers on modularity. One is a precis of his book, Modularity of Mind, which is useful in it brief outline of the main arugments of that book. The other, "Why Should the Mind Be Modular?" gives arguments for his empirical claims regarding the features of cognitive modules. It also has a prescient discussion that bears on contemporary Evolutionary Psychology and its use of the modularity concept.

This is a good book to have.

As usual, Fodor has a lot to write on philosophy of mind, but not much to say. This book should be entitled "My theories have no content- but please read my essays." Very weak.

This book is good for all ages. Moslty fo those who are fans of that genre.