This volume presents a rich diversity of views from researchers in cognitive science and associated disciplines - archaeology, artificial intelligence, linguistics, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology - on the nature, function and evolution of "mental" or "cognitive" states. A quick glance at the titles of the contributions and/or the disciplinary backgrounds of the contributors might lead one to suspect little commonality in theoretical interests. However, this would be a mistake. Although the contributions differ markedly in approach and methodology, common questions about mind and cognition unite them.

This volume is the second of a two-volume collection on mental states. The contributions to this volume focus on the question what language and language use reveals about cognitive structure and underlying cognitive categories, whereas the first volume is concerned with evolutionary and functional aspects of certain mental states in an effort to understand their nature. The contributions to this volume address the question what insights conceptual categorisation can give us into the organisation and structure of the mind and thus of mental states. Topics and linguistic phenomena investigated under this view include narratives and story telling, language development, figurative language, questions of linguistic categorisation, linguistic relativity, and more generally the linguistic coding of mental states (such as perceptions and attitudes). The volume comprises contributions from psychologists and linguists who explore the interaction between language and cognition. This reflects the provenance of the chapters, versions of which were presented at the 'International Language and Cognition Conference', held in September 2004 at Pacific Bay Resort in Coffs Harbour, Australia.

This volume is the first of a two-volume collection on mental states. The contributions to this volume focus on evolutionary and functional aspects of certain mental states in an effort to understand their nature, whereas the second volume is concerned with the question what language and language use reveals about cognitive structure and underlying cognitive categories. Questions that are addressed in this volume include: (i) how early did cognitive states of a sort rich enough to support communication and planning appear in the evolutionary history of hominids?; (ii) is it possible to infer the existence of sophisticated cognitive states from evidence of tool use?; (iii) how do mental states represent situations or events or actions?; (iv) how can we theoretically model mental states?; (v) how can we simulate mental states and their functions?; and (vi) what insights can conceptual categorisation - both linguistic and non-linguistic - give us into the organisation and structure of the mind and hence of mental states? The volume contains contributions from psychologists, linguists, artificial intelligence researchers, neuroscientists, archaeologists and philosophers, bringing together scholars from the diverse fields of cognitive science, or more specifically, the study of language and cognition. This reflects the provenance of the chapters, most of which were presented at the 'International Language and Cognition Conference', held in September 2004 at Pacific Bay Resort in Coffs Harbour, Australia.

Is the way we conceive of the mind an artefact of the culture in which we happen to live? A recurrent question in the study of languages and cultures concerns the extent to which language and culture shape thought. No one doubts that important conceptual categories are derived from our native tongue but how deep is the impression language makes on thought? Is the way we classify the various phenomena we experience language-and-culture relative in some strong sense? Consider the following thesis: 'But for the language we speak and the culture in which we live we would not conceive of the world in just the way we do'. This is presumably true. However thus stated it is also a very weak claim. For it amounts to little more than the truism above - that many of our conceptual categories are derived from our specific linguistic-cultural context. To be sure, the thesis becomes more interesting once we discover that certain classifications such as those of colour are not the universals we might have expected them to be.