Jackendoff Ray: SEMANTIC INTERPRETATION IN GENERATIVE GRAMMAR (MIT Press, 1972)

One of the milestone works in government and binding theory.
The author shows that theta roles determine to some extent the wellformedness of anaphoric relations. Theta roles form a hierarchy and binding must respect such hierarchy by placing the antecedent of an anaphor higher on the hierarchy than the anaphor itself.

Jackendoff Ray: X'SYNTAX (MIT Press, 1977)(MIT Press, 1972)

A monumental study of the phrase structure of the english language in the light of Chomsky's X-bar theory.

Jackendoff Ray: SEMANTICS AND COGNITION (MIT Press, 1983)

Jackendoff develops conceptual structures to explain language, in a fashion similar to Fodor's mentalese.
The structure of meaning ought to be pursued on the same first principles as phonology and syntax.
Meaning of verbs can be reduced to a few spacetime primitives, such as motion and location.
The "extended standard theory" enhances Chomsky's standard theory by using interpretation rules to extract the meaning of a sentence. Such rules apply to the intermediate syntactic structures used in the derivation of the phonetic representation.

Jackendoff Ray: CONSCIOUSNESS AND THE COMPUTATIONAL MIND (MIT Press, 1987)

Jackendoff believes in a hierarchy of levels of mental representation.
The book resumes Jackendoff's claim that phonology and syntax are key to the structure of meaning, then extends the framework developed for language to vision and music (hinting at a possible unification with Marr's theory of vision).
Each cognitive function exists at different levels of interpretations and cognitive functions generally interact at intermediary levels.
Jackndoff refines and extends Fodor's idea of the modularity of the mind.
Consciousness arises from a level of representation which is intermediate between the sense-data and the form of thought.
There are the physical brain, the computational mind (cognition) and the phenomenological mind (consciousness). The computational mind is the one that really "thinks", whereas the phenomenological mind only "feels" superficially a subset of the "thoughts". Most of "thinking" is actually unconscious. We are never conscious of the outer world, but only of the shadows of some of the processing that the computational mind does on the outer world.

Jackendoff Ray: SEMANTIC STRUCTURES (MIT Press, 1990)

Jackendoff's conceptual semantics is applied to lexical and syntactic expressions in English. Jackendoff proposes a formalism for describing lexical semantic facts and expressing semantic generalizations. He employs multi-dimensional representations analogous to those found in phonology.

Jackendoff Ray: LANGUAGES OF THE MIND (MIT Press, 1992)

This collection of papers summarizes Jackendoff's formal theory on the nature of language and a modular approach to "mental anatomy", and applies the same concepts to learning and common sense reasoning.
There is a tight relationship between vision and language. A lexical item contains the stereotipical image of the object or concept. Knowing the meaning of a word implies knowing how the object or concept looks like.

Jackendoff Ray: PATTERNS IN THE MIND (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993)

Following Chomsky, Jackendoff thinks that the human brain contains innate linguistic knowledge and that the same argument can be extended to all facets of human experience: all experience is constructed by unconscious genetically determined principles that operate in the brain.
The experience of spoken language is constructed by the hearer's mental grammar: speech per se is only a meaningless sound wave, only a hearer equipped with the proper device can make sense of it.
These same conclusions can be applied to thought itself, i.e. to the task of building concepts. Concepts are constructed by using some innate, genetically determined, machinery, a sort of "universal grammar of concepts". Language is but one aspect of a broader characteristic of the human brain.

Jackson Frank: CONDITIONALS (Basil Blackwell, 1987)

A collection of articles by David Lewis, Robert Stalnaker, Grice and Frank Jackson on the subject of conditionals. A theory of conditionals must offer an account of the truth conditions of a conditional (under which conditions "if A then B" is true or false, or acceptable to some degree). The traditional view that a conditional is true if and only if the antecedent is false or the consequent is true is too simplicistic and allows conditionals such as "if Jones lives in London, then he lives in Scotland" to be true (if he does not live in London or lives in Scotland) when it is obviously senseless.
Stalnaker and Lewis solve some of the problems of (subjective) conditionals ("if it were that A then it would be that B") by using possible-world semantics. Lewis also reviews Ernest Adams' thesis that the assertability of (indicative) conditionals ("if A then B") is measured by the conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent.

Jackson Frank: PERCEPTION (Cambridge University Press, 1977)

The immediate objects of perception are mental. To perceive an object is to be in a perceptual state as a causal result of the action of that object.
On epiphenomenal qualia Jackson proposed a famous thought experiement: a blind neurophysiologist that knows everything of how the brain perceives colors still cannot know what it feels like to see a color.
Color is not a property of material things. Sense-data are not material, they are mental.

Jauregui Jose: THE EMOTIONAL COMPUTER (Blackwell, 1995)

This is the english translation of 1990's "El Ordenador Cerebral".
Jauregi, like Wilson, views sociology as a branch of biology. The same emotional system controls social, sexual and individual behavior. Such emotional system originates from the neural organization of the brain: emotions are rational and predictable events. Jauregi believes that the brain is a computer, but introduced the novelty of emotions as the direct product of that computer's processing activity. It is emotions, not reason, that directs and informs the daily actions of individuals. Jauregi deals with humans that feel pleasure and pain rather than with abstract problem solvers.
Jauregi begins by separating the brain and the self: the brain is aware of what is going on in the digestive system of the body, but will inform the self only when some correction/action is necessary. Normally, an individual is not aware of her digestive processes. Her brain is always informed, though. The communication channel between the brain and the self is made of emotions. The brain can tune the importance of the message by controlling the intensity of the emotions. Far from being an irrational process, the emotional life is mathematically calculated to achieve exactly the level of response needed. Feelings are subjective and inaccessible, but they also are objective and precise.
The self has no idea of the detailed process that was going on in the body and of the reason why that process must be corrected. The brain's emotional system, on the other hand, is a sophisticated and complex information-processing system. The brain is a computer programmed to inform the self (through emotions) of what must be done to preserve her body and her society. It is through emotions that the brain informs the self of every single detail in the body that is relevant for survival. There almost is no instant without an emotion that tells the individual to do something rather than something else. "For human beings the reality that ultimately matters is the reality of their feelings".
The self keeps a level of freedom: while it cannot suppress the (emotional) messages it receives from the brain, it can disobey them. The brain may increase the intensity of the message as the self disobeys it a painful conflict may arise. The brain and the self are not only separate, but they may fight each other.
Only the self can be conscious and feel, but the brain has control of both consciousness and feelings.
If we view the brain as a computer, the hardware is made of the neural organization. There are two types of software, though: bionatural (knowledge about the natural world) and biocultural (such as a language or a religion). A program has three main components: the sensory, the mental and the emotional systems. Any sensory input can be translated automatically by the brain into a mental (idea) or emotional (feeling) message; and viceversa. Biocultural and bionatural programs exhert emotional control over the body.
Jauregi distinguishes five systems of communication: the natural system (the sender is a natural thing, such as a tree), the cultural system (the sender is culture, something created by humans), the somatic system (the sender is the individual's own body), the imaginary system (the sender is imagination) and the social system (the sender is another individual). The human brain is genetically equipped to receive and understand all five kinds of messages. What ultimately matters is the emotional translations of sensory inputs.

Jaynes Julian: THE ORIGIN OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN THE BREAKDOWN OF THE BICAMERAL MIND (Houghton Mifflin, 1977)

Jaynes conducted a monumental research on the rise of consciousness in mankind, reviewing abundant archaeological, historical, and biological sources of past civilizations.
The stunning result is that until about 3000 years ago human beings were still devoid of consciousness, they still relied, like all other primates,on learned reactions. The people of even the most developed civilizations before 1000 B.C. (ancient Assyria, Babylonia, Mesopotamia, Egypt) were not conscious. Ancient books such as the Iliad and the Bible were composed by nonconscious minds that could not distinguish between real and imagined events. The characters act unconsciously in making their decisions and always rely on "voices". They tend to speak in hexameter rhythms, which are characteristic of the automatic processing of the right-hemisphere brain. Schizophrenics often tend to speak in the same rhythm. These stories are all action and no introspection.
Ancient people, because nonconscious, did not feel responsible for their actions. They had no concept of good and evil.They had no conscious memories. They had no interest in history (past). They had no interest in progress (future). They had no picture of themselves. Human beings did already employ language to communicate with other human beings, and to cooperate and to build societies and civilizations, but, in each individual's head, that language did not serve as conscious thought, it served as communication between the two hemispheres of the brain. Human beings were guided not by conscious reasoning, but by "hallucinations". Hallucinations would form in the right hemisphere of the brain and would be communicated to the left hemisphere of the brain, which would then receive them as commands. This is what Jaynes refers to as the bicameral mind. "God" is one manifestation of the bicameral mind, it is the main voice that would drive individual and social behavior. With the emergence of oral languages, the hallucinating voices for performing fundamental actions became standardized and consequently societies became increasingly organized.
A conscious mind appears in the Odyssey and the most recent part of the Bible, about 3000 years ago. Those writings gradually shift from nonconscious actions to conscious decisions. In the Odyssey, unlike the Iliad, characters are aware of the moral and physical consequences of their actions. Moral issues started spreading in written languages around by the sixth century B.C.. Chinese literature moved from the bicameral mind to the conscious mind about 500 B.C. with the writings of Confucius. Indian literature shifted to consciousness around 400 B.C. with the Upanishadic epic. At that time, the bicameral mind began breaking down under the pressure caused by the complexity of the environment (mainly, society). The hallucinated voices became confused, contradictory, and ultimately counterproductive. They no longer provided automatic guidance for survival. At the same time, the development of writing, and the permanent recording of procedures, in 2,000 B.C., progressively reduced the need for guidance from the hallucinated voices and replaced them with a much more effective means of organizationConsciousness was therefore invented by human beings through a process that entailed the loss of belief in gods and natural selection itself, which started rewarding conscious individuals over nonconscious ones.
Jaynes thinks that, today, governments and religions, and psychological phenomena such as hypnosis and schizophrenia, and artistic practices such as poetry and music, are vestiges of that earlier stage of human consciousness, when action was guided by the bicameral mind, because these are all manifestations of an instinctive tendency towards seeking directions, or, in general, automatic guidance, from others.
Today, these two minds still coexist: the nonconscious bicameral mind that seeks guidance from "authorities" for important decisions in complex situations (such as those related to society); and the conscious mind that creates its own decisions in more local and manageable conditions.
In passing, Jaynes makes a number of interesting points about consciousness. First of all, intelligence and consciousness are not the same thing and they are only vaguely related. Consciousness is not necessary for concepts, learning, reason or even some elementary forms of thinking. Nonconscious beings can develop sophisticated civilizations.
Awareness of an action tends to follow, not precede, the action. Awareness of an action bears little or no influence on the outcome. Before one utters a sentence, one is not conscious of being about to utter those specific words.
Consciousness is an operation rather than a thing. Consciousness requires metaphors to express one thing in terms of another. Consciousness also requires analogy to transform things of the real world into meanings in a metaphorical space. The mental space is created through metaphors and analogies. Metaphors and analogies map the functions of the right hemisphere into the left hemisphere and make the bicameral mind obsolete. Metaphors of "me" and analogies of "I" enabled a greater understanding of the world and of other individuals. In turn, consciousness expands by creating more and more metaphors and analogies. Ultimately, consciousness is a metaphor-generated model of the world.
Consciousness could not have been invented if language had not evolved to the point of facilitating metaphorical thinking. Oral languages developed around 70,000 B.C., written languages began about 3000 B.C., but metaphorical structures did not appear until about 1,000 B.C. Early writings in hieroglyphic, hiertatic, and cuneiform forms reflect a nonmetaphoric and nonconscious attitude.

Jeanerrod Marc: THE COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE OF ACTION (Blackwell, 1996)

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Jerison, Harry: THE EVOLUTION OF THE BRAIN AND INTELLIGENCE (1973)

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Johnson Mark: THE BODY IN THE MIND (Univ of Chicago Press, 1987)

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Johnson Mark: DEVELOPMENTAL COGNITIVE NEUROSCIENCE (Blackwell, 1996)

The author examines the plasticity and molding of the brain from the perspective of developmental psychologicy.

Johnson Mark: BRAIN DEVELOPMENT AND COGNITION (Blackwell, 1993)

A reader on the subject.

Johnson Mark: THE BODY IN THE MIND (University of Chicago Press, 1987)

Human thought is both grounded in our bodily experience. Johnson shows that experience is structured in a meaningful way prior to any concepts. Some preconceptual schemata are inherently meaningful to people by virtue of their bodily experience.

Joseph Rhawn: The Naked Neuron: EVOLUTION AND THE LANGUAGES OF THE BODY AND BRAIN (Plenum Press, 1993)

Communication occurs at several levels, from chemical to linguistic.

Johnson-Laird Philip: HUMAN AND MACHINE THINKING (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1993)

A theory of deduction, induction and creation.

Johnson-Laird Philip: THINKING (Cambridge Univ Press, 1977)

A collection of articles that reviews the study of thinking in the aftermath of the conceptual revolution that forced the transition from behaviorism to information-processing. Contributions range from philosophy (Popper, Kuhn) to artificial intelligence (Minsky, Schank).

Johnson-Laird Philip: MENTAL MODELS (Harvard Univ Press, 1983)

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Johnson-Laird Philip: THE COMPUTER AND THE MIND (Harvard Univ Press, 1988)

An introduction to the themes and methods of cognitive science, with a review of porduction and connectionist architectures. Speech, vision and language are devoted long chapters. Johnson-Laird also introduces his theory of mental models and resumes his theory of consciousness and emotions.

Johnson-Laird Philip & Byrne Ruth: DEDUCTION (Lawrence Erlbaum, 1991)

The authors advance a comprehensive theory to explain all the main varieties of deduction: propositional reasoning (that uses the connectives "and", "or" and "not"), relational reasoning (that depends on relations between entities), quantificational reasoning (that uses quantifiers such as "any" and "some"). And justify it with a variety of psychological experiments.
In order to understand discourse, humans construct an internal representation of the state of affairs that is described in that discourse. These mental models have the same structure as human conceptions of the situations they represent. Deduction does not depend on formal rules of inference but rather on a search for alternative models of the premises that would refute a putative conclusion. Central to the theory is the principle that people use models that make explicit as little information as possible. The theory also make sense of how people deal with conditionals.
The theory explains phenomena such as: that modus ponens ("if p then q" and "p" then "q") is easier than modus tollens ("if p then q" and "not q" then "not p").

Jones Steven: LANGUAGE OF GENES (Harper Collins, 1993)

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Josephson John & Josephson Susan: ABDUCTIVE INFERENCE (Cambridge University Press, 1993)

Abduction (inference to the best explanation, i.e. building the hypothesis that best accounts for the data) is ubiquitous in ordinary life as well as in scientific theory formation. The book presents a dynasty of systems that explored abduction. Intelligence is viewed as a cooperative community of knowledge-based specialists (performing "generic tasks"). Knowledge arises from experience by processes of abductive inference.

Jolly Alison: LUCY's LEGACY (Harvard University Press, 1999)

The American zoologist Alison Jolly contends that altruism is a fundamental aspect of evolution. The very existence of sex as a means of reproduction is proof that cooperation is a crucial evolutionary force. Sex is a trade-off: a genome sacrifices part of its genes to team up with another genome and increase its chances of survival in the environment.

Joseph, Rhawn: NAKED NEURON (Plenum, 1993)

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Jouvet, Michel: THE PARADOX OF sLEEP: THE STORY OF DREAMING (MIT Press, 1999)

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Jouvet Michel: LE SOMMEIL ET LE REVE (Jacob, 1992)

Jouvet was the first to localize the trigger zone for REM sleep and dreaming in the brain stem. In this book he provides a neurobiological and psychological analysis of sleep and dreaming.
According to his findings, a dream is the vehicle employed by an organism to cancel or archive the day's experiences on the basis of a genetic program. Dreaming is a process that absorbs a lot of energy.
This theory would also solve the dualism between hereditary and acquired features. An hereditary component is activated daily to decide how new data must be acquired.