This volume is the culmination of the second project undertaken by Sheffield's Hang Seng Centre for Cognitive Studies, following its founding in 1992 with an endowment generously provided by the Hang Seng Bank of Hong Kong. (The first project resulted in Theories of theories of mind, edited by Peter Carruthers and Peter K. Smith, published by Cambridge University Press in 1996.) Five interdisciplinary workshops were held over the period 1994–6, and the concluding conference was held in Ranmoor Hall of Residence, University of Sheffield, in June 1996.

The intention behind the project was to bring together a select group of philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, neuro-scientists, computer scientists and linguists, to forge a genuinely interdisciplinary approach to the question of the inter-relations between language and thought. For reasons which we explain in our introductory chapter, we felt that the issue of language and thought had almost dropped from sight in the cognitive sciences in recent decades, and that the time was ripe for a more finegrained examination of the issues from an interdisciplinary perspective.

Most of the participants in the project were able to meet and discuss on a regular basis over a two-year period, before finally presenting their papers at the concluding conference. Of the twenty papers delivered to the conference, the twelve most focused, relevant and original contributions were selected for inclusion in the volume (together with one further paper which had been delivered at an earlier workshop). Most of these papers were then extensively re-written in the light of editorial advice and comments from the Cambridge referees. The result, we believe, is a set of powerful and original interdisciplinary essays.