The recent reemergence of theories that emphasize the semantic and conceptual aspects of emotions has also brought to attention questions about their rationality. There are essentially two standard senses in which emotions can be assessed for their rationality. First, emotions can be said to be categorically rational insofar as they presuppose our psychological capacities to be clearly conscious of distinctions, to engage and manipulate concepts, and hence to provide intentional descriptions as reasons for what we feel and are moved to (...) do. For this "cognitive" rationality we can apply the usual standards intrinsic to the processes of belief formation such as coherence, consistency, inferential validity, and appropriateness of evidence. Secondly, and derivatively of "rationality" as a teleological or strategic notion, emotions can be thought of as rational or irrational depending upon their function in fulfilling certain specified human purposes. While neither adhering to nor dismissing what these two mainstream perspectives afford, the following thesis is an alternative, yet complementary, project. Its aim is to "rationalize" emotions through insights obtained in programmatic examinations of their relationship to a number of critical features of being human: intentionality, expression and language, sense of self, responsibility, self-deception, and value cognition and moral agency. The idea is less to fit emotions within some formulaic description of rationality and more to let its potential definition emerge subsequently to these investigations. This reflects a conviction that rationality is not a unitary property of our minds but a complex stance towards the world. It also exhibits an awareness that, as evidenced by current debates, "rationality" is very much a contested notion. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: 1 The Cartesian legacy -- The dominant paradigm -- Cartesian dualism -- The secret life of the body -- The Cartesian theatre -- The domain of reason -- The causal relevance of the mind -- Conclusion -- Further reading --2 Reductionism and the road to functionalism -- Causation, scientific realism, and physicalism -- Reductionism and central state materialism -- Problems with central state materialism -- Modified ontological physicalism: supervenience -- Modified explanatory physicalism: the disunity of -- (...) science picture -- Supervenient causation -- Functionalism -- Further reading --3 Computational models of mind -- Intentionality -- Rationality: the calculative account -- The computational model of mind -- Objections to the language of thought (1) -- Objections to the language of thought (2) -- Conclusion -- Further reading --4 The content of thought -- The internalist picture -- Externalism -- Singular thoughts -- Dual component theories -- Naturalistic externalism -- Teleological theories -- Conclusion -- Further reading --5 Anti-reductionist alternatives -- Interpretationalism -- Real patterns -- Direct interpretationalism -- Psychological causalism -- Modified psychological causalism -- Third-personalism and perspectivity -- The world from the point of view of the subject -- Context and culture -- Conclusion -- Further reading --6 The content of experience -- Consciousness -- The knowledge argument -- Absent qualia and inverted spectra -- Functionalist responses -- Internal monitoring -- Intentionalism -- Form and content -- The private language argument -- Further reading -- 7 Subjects of experience -- Subjectivity -- The subjective viewpoint -- Intersubjectivity -- Simulation theory -- Normativity and normality -- Expression -- Self-knowledge -- Conclusion -- Further reading --8 The embodied subject -- Mentality -- Desire -- Beyond the Cartesian body -- Metaphysical questions: multiple narratives -- Further reading -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index. (shrink)

The study of animal cognition raises profound questions about the minds of animals and philosophy of mind itself. Aristotle argued that humans are the only animal to laugh, but in recent experiments rats have also been shown to laugh. In other experiments, dogs have been shown to respond appropriately to over two hundred words in human language. In this introduction to the philosophy of animal minds Kristin Andrews introduces and assesses the essential topics, problems and debates as they (...) cut across animal cognition and philosophy of mind. She addresses the following key topics: what is cognition, and what is it to have a mind? What questions should we ask to determine whether behaviour has a cognitive basis? the science of animal minds explained: ethology, behaviourist psychology, and cognitive ethology rationality in animals animal consciousness: what does research into pain and the emotions reveal? What can empirical evidence about animal behaviour tell us about philosophical theories of consciousness? does animal cognition involve belief and concepts; do animals have a ‘Language of Thought’? animal communication other minds: do animals attribute ‘mindedness’ to other creatures? moral reasoning and ethical behaviour in animals animal cognition and memory. Extensive use of empirical examples and case studies is made throughout the book. These include Cheney and Seyfarth’s ververt monkey research, Thorndike’s cat puzzle boxes, Jensen’s research into humans and chimpanzees and the ultimatum game, Pankseep and Burgdorf’s research on rat laughter, and Clayton and Emery’s research on memory in scrub-jays. Additional features such as chapter summaries, annotated further reading and a glossary make this an indispensable introduction to those teaching philosophy of mind, animal cognition. It will also be an excellent resource for those in fields such as ethology, biology and psychology. (shrink)

In _Neuroscience and Philosophy_ three prominent philosophers and a leading neuroscientist clash over the conceptual presuppositions of cognitive neuroscience. The book begins with an excerpt from Maxwell Bennett and Peter Hacker's _Philosophical Foundations of Neuroscience_ (Blackwell, 2003), which questions the conceptual commitments of cognitive neuroscientists. Their position is then criticized by Daniel Dennett and John Searle, two philosophers who have written extensively on the subject, and Bennett and Hacker in turn respond. Their impassioned debate encompasses a wide range of central (...) themes: the nature of consciousness, the bearer and location of psychological attributes, the intelligibility of so-called brain maps and representations, the notion of qualia, the coherence of the notion of an intentional stance, and the relationships between mind, brain, and body. Clearly argued and thoroughly engaging, the authors present fundamentally different conceptions of philosophical method, cognitive-neuroscientific explanation, and human nature, and their exchange will appeal to anyone interested in the relation of mind to brain, of psychology to neuroscience, of causal to rational explanation, and of consciousness to self-consciousness. In his conclusion Daniel Robinson (member of the philosophy faculty at Oxford University and Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Georgetown University) explains why this confrontation is so crucial to the understanding of neuroscientific research. The project of cognitive neuroscience, he asserts, depends on the incorporation of human nature into the framework of science itself. In Robinson's estimation, Dennett and Searle fail to support this undertaking; Bennett and Hacker suggest that the project itself might be based on a conceptual mistake. Exciting and challenging, _Neuroscience and Philosophy_ is an exceptional introduction to the philosophical problems raised by cognitive neuroscience. (shrink)

Indian Perspectives on Consciousness, Language and Self by Marco Ferrante explores theories of consciousness by examining the non-dual philosophy of Recognition mainly represented by the two philosophers Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta, and also carefully concludes that the trajectory of their ideas have compelling influence from Bhartṛhari and his commentator Helārāja. No philosophy ever evolves and develops in a void. No philosophical tradition or theory functions in oblivion. In the history of philosophy in South Asia, this is also true (...) of the traditions that have staunchly stood up and rigorously argued for the ubiquity of consciousness. The dynamism of... (shrink)

The philosophy of mind encompasses a familiar set of topics: consciousness, intentionality, mental causation, emotion, whatever topics in psychology happen to capture our interest (concepts, mindreading . . .), and so on. There is a topic deserving of addition to this list, a topic that should be receiving regular attention from philosophers of mind but is not: practical rationality. The philosophy of mind bears directly upon what can be called the ‘meta-theory’ of practical rationality, and meta-theories of rationality (...) likewise impose constraints on the philosophy of mind. Philosophers of mind who do not engage with work on practical rationality risk developing theories that are blind to important theoretical demands. They also risk allowing ethicists—who have been at work on the meta-theory of practical rationality—to unilaterally set their theoretical agendas. It is therefore time to get to work. (shrink)

This paper seeks to elucidate the distinctive nature of the rational impression on its own terms, asking precisely what it means for the Stoics to define logikē phantasia as an impression whose content is expressible in language. I argue first that impression, generically, is direct and reflexive awareness of the world, the way animals get information about their surroundings. Then, that the rational impression, specifically, is inherently conceptual, inferential, and linguistic, i.e. thick with propositional content, the way humans receive incoming (...) information from the world. When we suspend certain contemporary assumptions about propositional content, the textual evidence can be taken at face value to reveal why, for the Stoics, rational impressions are called thoughts (noēseis) and how the Stoics’ novel semantic entities called lekta (roughly, the meanings of our words) depend on rational impressions for their subsistence. (shrink)

Recent philosophy of mind has had a mistaken conception of the nature of psychological concepts. It has assumed too much similarity between psychological judgments and those of natural science and has thus overlooked the fact that other people are not just objects whose thoughts we may try to predict and control but fellow creatures with whom we talk and co-operate. In this collection of essays, Jane Heal argues that central to our ability to arrive at views about others' thoughts (...) is not knowledge of some theory of the mind but rather an ability to imagine alternative worlds and how things appear from another person's point of view. She then applies this view to questions of how we represent others' thoughts, the shape of psychological concepts, the nature of rationality and the possibility of first person authority. This book should appeal to students and professionals in philosophy of mind and language. (shrink)

As a growing area of research, the philosophy of time is increasingly relevant to different areas of philosophy and even other disciplines. This book describes and evaluates the most important debates in philosophy of time, under several subject areas: metaphysics, epistemology, physics, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, cognitive science, rationality, and art. -/- Questions this book investigates include: Can we know what time really is? Is time possible, especially given modern physics? Must there be (...) time because we cannot think without it? What do we experience of time? How might philosophy of time be relevant to understanding the mind-body relationship or evidence in cognitive science? Can the philosophy of time help us understand biases toward the future and the fear of death? How is time relevant to art – and is art relevant to philosophical debates about time? Finally, what exactly could time travel be? And could time travel satisfy emotions such as nostalgia and regret? -/- Through asking such questions, and showing how they might be best answered, the book demonstrates the importance philosophy of time has in contemporary thought. Each of the book’s 10 chapters begins with a helpful introduction and ends with study questions and an annotated list of further readings. This and a comprehensive bibliography at the end of the book prepare the reader to go further in their study of the philosophy of time. (shrink)

This book attempts to answer the question: How much of what we do is the result of conscious and deliberate decisions and how much originates in unconscious, unthought out, automatic directives? The answer is that far more than what we might imagine falls into the second category. We tend to assume responsibility for our unconsciously determined thoughts and actions, and even though we do not know why we think and act the way we do, we make up reasons for it, (...) which we truly believe. Each one of us is really two people in the same body, who in many respects, function quite independently of each other, and yet somehow manage to get along with things, while the other, the outer brain, serves as the spokesperson for both of them. The inner brain is the source of our objectives and generates the emotions that keep us on track in our attainment of them. This book explores the strange relationship between these two parts of us across a spectrum of mental processes including, memory, language, problem-solving, dreams, delusions and hallucinations, and more complex pursuits sucs as the arts, humor and religion. (shrink)

_Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction_ is a lively and accessible introduction to one of philosophy's most active and important areas of research.

This chapter contains sections titled: Using Sartre Ordinary Language and the Self Self‐Denial in the Analytic Philosophy of Mind and in Sartre A Short Phenomenology of Some Distinctions Sartre's Conception of the Pre‐Reflexive Cogito De Se Theories of Self‐Awareness A Synthesis of the Pre‐reflexive Cogito with a De Se Theory of Self‐Awareness Unity of Consciousness and Reflexive Assent Where Do Higher‐Order Theories of Consciousness Go Wrong? Conclusion.

Philosophy of mind is one of the core disciplines in philosophy. The questions that it deals with are profound, vexed and intriguing. This volume of 15 new cutting-edge essays gives young researchers a chance to stir up new ideas. The essays cover a wide range of topics, including the nature of consciousness, cognition, and action. A common theme in the essays is that the future of philosophy of mind lies in judicious use of resources from related fields, (...) including epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of science, and cognitive neuroscience. Approaches that the researchers explore in this volume range from the use of armchair conceptual analysis to brain scanning techniques. (shrink)

In this book Jonathan Lowe offers a lucid and wide-ranging introduction to the philosophy of mind. Using a problem-centred approach designed to stimulate as well as instruct, he begins with a general examination of the mind-body problem and moves on to detailed examination of more specific philosophical issues concerning sensation, perception, thought and language, rationality, artificial intelligence, action, personal identity and self-knowledge. His discussion is notably broad in scope, and distinctive in giving equal attention to deep metaphysical questions concerning (...) the mind and to the discoveries and theories of modern scientific psychology. It will be of interest to any reader with a basic grounding in modern philosophy. (shrink)

Human beings who have mastered a natural language are self-conscious creatures: they can think, and indeed speak, about themselves in the first person. This dissertation is about the significance of this capacity: what it is and what difference it makes to our minds. My thesis is that the capacity for self-consciousness is essential to rationality, the thing that sets the minds of rational creatures apart from those of mere brutes. This, I argue, is what Kant was getting at in a (...) famous passage of his Critique of Pure Reason, when he claimed that a representation which could not be “accompanied with the ‘I think’” would be “nothing to me” as a thinking being. I call this claim the Kantian thesis. My dissertation seeks to explain and defend the Kantian thesis, to show how it entails that the advent of self-consciousness brings with it a new kind of mind, and to sketch the implications of this point for a philosophy of mind that seeks to understand the minds of rational creatures. This involves, on the one hand, an investigation of the kinds of capacities that characterize a rational creature, and, on the other hand, an argument connecting reason with self-consciousness. I show that a rational creature, in the interesting sense, is one capable of conceptual representation, and I argue that (1) to represent conceptually is to represent in a way that decouples information from any particular context or purpose, (2) this special form of representation is possible only in a creature that can reflect explicitly on grounds for judging a proposition true, and (3) to have this capacity to reflect explicitly on grounds is necessarily to have the crux of self- consciousness. If this is right, then the representations of a rational creature must differ from those of a nonrational creature not merely in complexity but in kind. The dissertation sketches the implications of this point for various forms of naturalism and reductionism in the philosophy of mind, for debates about how to explain “first person authority,” and for our understanding of the sort of failure of self-consciousness involved in self-deception. (shrink)

One of the most important and influential philosophers of the last 30 years, John Searle has been concerned throughout his career with a single overarching question: how can we have a unified and theoretically satisfactory account of ourselves and of our relations to other people and to the natural world? In other words, how can we reconcile our common-sense conception of ourselves as conscious, free, mindful, rational agents in a world that we believe comprises brute, unconscious, mindless, meaningless, mute physical (...) particles in fields of force? The essays in this collection are all related to the broad overarching issue that unites the diverse strands of Searle's work. Gathering in an accessible manner essays available only in relatively obscure books and journals, this collection will be of particular value to professionals and upper-level students in philosophy as well as to Searle's more extended audience in such fields as psychology and linguistics. (shrink)

Of the many translators who carried the Buddhist doctrine to China, Paramartha, a missionary-monk who arrived in China in AD 546, ranks as the translator par excellence of the sixth century. Introducing philosophical ideas that would subsequently excite the Chinese imagination to develop the great schools of Sui and T'ang Buddhism, Paramartha's translations are almost exclusively of Yogacara Buddhist texts on the nature of the mind and consciousness. This first study of Paramartha in a Western language focuses on the Chuan (...) shih lun (Evolution of Consciousness), a text that reveals the outline of Paramartha's Yogacara thought. The study begins with a discussion of Paramartha's life, the historical and political context of the time in India and south China, and the roles of his main disciples in disseminating his work. It then describes Paramartha's treatment of Yogacarin views on language and the process of cognition, both central to this system of thought. The final chapter analyzes the history and content of the Chuan shih lun, and the book concludes with a new translation of the text, with extensive annotations. (shrink)

This book, published in 1976, presents an entirely original approach to the subject of the mind-body problem, examining it in terms of the conceptual links between the physical sciences and the sciences of human behaviour. It is based on the cybernetic concepts of information and feedback and on the related concepts of thermodynamic and communication-theoretic entropy. The foundation of the approach is the theme of continuity between evolution, learning and human consciousness. The author defines life as a process of energy (...) exchange between organism and environment, and evolution as a feedback process maintaining equilibrium between environment and reproductive group. He demonstrates that closely related feedback processes on the levels of the behaving organism and of the organism’s nervous system constitute the phenomena of learning and consciousness respectively. He analyses language as an expedient for extending human information-processing and control capacities beyond those provided by one’s own nervous system, and shows reason to be a mode of processing information in the form of concepts removed from immediate stimulus control. The last chapter touches on colour vision, pleasure and pain, intentionality, self-awareness and other subjective phenomena. Of special interest to the communication theorist and philosopher, this study is also of interest to psychologists and anyone interested in the connection between the physical and life sciences. (shrink)

Developments in the philosophy of mind over the last 20 years have dramatically changed the nature of the subject. In this major new introduction, Tim Bayne presents an outstanding overview of many of the key topics, problems, and debates, taking account not only of changes in philosophy of mind itself but also of important developments in the scientific study of the mind. -/- The following topics are discussed in depth: -/- What distinguishes a physicalist conception of the mind? (...) -/- Behaviourism, the identity theory, functionalism, and eliminativism as accounts of the mental -/- The nature of perception, including the issue of perceptual transparency, the admissible contents of perception, and the question of unconscious perception -/- The nature of thought, including the language of thought hypothesis, Searle’s Chinese room argument, and the Turing test -/- The basis of intentional content -/- Externalist accounts of content and the ‘extended mind’ thesis -/- Consciousness-based objections to physicalism, and illusionist and panpsychist conceptions of consciousness -/- Theories of consciousness, including methodological issues in the study of consciousness -/- Mental causation, including both philosophical and scientific challenges -/- The problem(s) of other minds, including knowledge of non-human minds -/- Self-knowledge -/- Personal identity and the nature of the self -/- The book features a number of boxes that provide a more in-depth look at particular issues. Also included are chapter summaries, guides to further reading, and a helpful glossary of terms. -/- Written by a leading figure in the field, Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction is an invaluable core text for any student coming to philosophy of mind for the first time. (shrink)

The metamathematical theorems of Gödel and Church are frequently applied to the philosophy of mind, typically as rational evidence against mechanism. Using methods of Post and Smullyan, these results are presented as purely mathematical theorems and various such applications are discussed critically. In particular, J. Lucas's use of Gödel's theorem to distinguish between conscious and unconscious beings is refuted, while more generally, attempts to extract philosophy from metamathematics are shown to involve only dramatizations of the constructivity problem in (...) foundations. More specifically, philosophical extrapolations from metamathematics are shown to involve premature extensions of Church's thesis. (shrink)

This collection opens a dialogue between process philosophy and contemporary consciousness studies. Approaching consciousness from diverse disciplinary perspectives—philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, neuropathology, psychotherapy, biology, animal ethology, and physics—the contributors offer empirical and philosophical support for a model of consciousness inspired by the process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947). Whitehead’s model is developed in ways he could not have anticipated to show how it can advance current debates beyond well-known sticking points. This has trenchant consequences for epistemology and (...) suggests fresh and promising new perspectives on such topics as the mind-body problem, the neurobiology of consciousness, animal consciousness, the evolution of consciousness, panpsychism, the unity of consciousness, epiphenomenalism, free will, and causation. Contents: Introduction, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes I. Setting the Stage 1. Process Thought as a Heuristic for Investigating Consciousness, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes 2. Whitehead as a Neglected Figure of 20th Century Philosophy, Michel Weber & Anderson Weekes 3. Consciousness as a Topic of Investigation in Western Thought, Anderson Weekes 4. Whitehead’s Unique Approach to the Topic of Consciousness, Anderson Weekes II. Psychology and Philosophy of Mind 5. Consciousness as a Subjective Form, David Ray Griffin 6. The Interpretation and Integration of the Literature on Consciousness from a Process Perspective, Michael W. Katzko 7. Windows on Nonhuman Minds, Donald R. Griffin III. From Metaphysics to (Neuro)Science and Back Again 8. Panexperientialism, Quantum Theory, and Neuroplasticity, George W. Shields 9. The Evolution of Consciousness, Max Velmans 10. The Carrier Theory Of Causation, Gregg H. Rosenberg IV. Clinical Applications: Consciousness as Process 11. The Microgenetic Revolution in Contemporary Neuropsychology and Neurolinguistics, Maria Pachalska and Bruce Duncan MacQueen 12. From Coma to Consciousness, Avraham Schweiger, Michael Frost, Ofer Keren 13. Consciousness and Rationality from a Process Perspective, Michel Weber V. History (and Future?) of Philosophy 14. Consciousness, Memory, and Recollection according to Whitehead, Xavier Verley 15. Consciousness and Causation in Light of Whitehead’s Phenomenology of Becoming, Anderson Weekes. (shrink)

According to most philosophy of mind and cognitive science literature, consciousness has nothing to do with society and little to do with language; it is centred in the individual, conceived as an autonomous rational agent, and it is often reduced to the physics of the brain. Such impoverished reductionist settings exclude nearly everything of any real interest, including most of what is discussed in this paper; in particular, phrases like ‘consciousness raising’, ‘global consciousness of the environment’, and ‘class consciousness’ (...) can at best be seen as bad metaphors. But a deeper understanding of consciousness supports a very different conclusion. (shrink)

I show that the latter Wittgenstein's treatment of language and the mind results in a conception of the human subject that goes against the exclusive emphasis on the cognitive that characterizes our modern conception of knowledge and the self. For Wittgenstein, our identification with the cognitive ego is tantamount to a blindness to our own nature — blindness that is entrenched in our present culture. The task of philosophy is thus transformed into a form of cultural therapy that seeks (...) to awaken in us a sensitivity to different modes of awareness than the merely intellectual. Its substance of reflection becomes not only the field of conscious rational thought, but the tension in our nature between reason and vital feeling, that is, between culture and life. (shrink)

Although the importance of literacy is widely acknowledged in society and remains at the top of the political agenda, writing has been slow to establish a place in the cognitive sciences. Olson argues that to understand the cognitive implications of literacy, it is necessary to see reading and writing as providing access to and consciousness of aspects of language, such as phonemes, words and sentences, that are implicit and unconscious in speech. Reading and writing create a system of metarepresentational concepts (...) that bring those features of language into consciousness as a subject of discourse. This consciousness of language is essential not only to acquiring literacy but also to the formation of systematic thought and rationality. The Mind on Paper is a compelling exploration of what literacy does for our speech and hence for our thought, and will be of interest to readers in developmental psychology, cognitive science, linguistics, and education. (shrink)

In fin-de-siècle France, we witness a strange circulation of concepts between philosophy, theoretical and experimental psychology, and the borderline realm of what we would now call meta- or parapsychology. This was a time characterized by a complex process of redefinition of the disciplinary frontiers between philosophy and psychology, which favoured the birth of hybrid conceptualities and stark oppositions as well. Furthermore, the great scientific advances in physics, physiology, and psychology fostered hope for a full rational explanation of reality, (...) even of its most unfathomable layers and seemingly bizarre phenomena. Focusing on the case of Émile Boirac’s research on what he termed ‘cryptopsychism’, notably in his book Our Hidden Forces, this article aims to show how Kantian notions and models of consciousness belonging to the canon of French spiritualist philosophical psychology were taken up by scientists such as Pierre Janet and ended up being assimilated and discussed in the more obscure and precarious realm of scientific inquiry into metapsychical phenomena. Far from being a mere historical curiosity, this quest for a scientific account of the latent and subconscious life of the mind sheds light on the intricate relationship between philosophy and the human sciences between the 19th and 20th centuries. (shrink)

Recent years have witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of introductory texts in the philosophy of mind, many of them written by eminent practitioners in the field. Never before have so many choices been available. Lowe’s book was written, we are told in the preface, in part in order to combat two trends: a tendency to treat the philosophy of mind as if it is exhausted by the mind/body problem, with its attendant catalogue of “isms”; and a growing propensity to (...) carry on as if philosophers of mind are nothing more than junior partners within the cognitive science community, and to downplay the more traditional metaphysical concerns associated with the subject in the past. In contrast, Lowe discusses, in detail, not just the mind/body problem but mental content, sensations and appearances, perception, thought and language, rationality and artificial intelligence, action and the will, and personal identity and self-knowledge. He does so from a traditional metaphysical perspective. (shrink)

Being evasive as it is, philosophers have often tried to do without consciousness. Despite this, it has played a key role in the endeavours of philosophy of mind, as witnessed by its reputation as a "mark of the mental" and works of philosophers like John Searle and Daniel Dennett. Intentionality has shared a similar role, such that one and the other have often been brought together in a symbiotic relationship (Searle 1990) or deemed coextensive (Crane 1998). Such promiscuity is (...) not necessary. The revolution brought about by embodied and situated approaches seem to leave little place for such an association. Intentionality is seldom studied in the new paradigm, and when it is, new models of it are applicable to biological and robotic structures which, by most accounts, probably have no consciousness (Millikan 1984, Menary 2006). Menary (2009) also notes that the same could be said of scholastic accounts of intentionality. On the other hand, consciousness is being studied and various ways which do not involve intentionality or anything similar. I suggest that the association between these two notions has to do with the particular intellectual environment that prevailed in traditional philosophy of mind. Considerations about access and the good fortune of cognitivism, among other factors, made for a culture that emphasized the gap between behaviour on one hand and the the mental states that characterize us when we are in a disposition to cause behaviour on the other. In such conditions, concepts like intentionality and consciousness acted as bridge and allowed for a language which enabled accounts of the mind that remained somewhat comprehensive and unified, while leaving the gap unfilled. As they were covering the most problematic and elusive parts of our understanding of the mind, there was both enough similarity in the ways we used those concepts, and enough vagueness in how we accounted for their realization in physical systems, to make a rapprochement inevitable. When a new paradigm swept away the cognitivist conception of representation, some philosophers and cognitive scientists turned to more embodied and situated models of cognition. Representations in this paradigm (such as Millikan’s (1995) and Clark’s (1997)) are “action-oriented”, thus leaving no gap between action and representation – getting an account of the complex representations that we communicate in propositions is thus seen as a matter of empirical investigation. If there is no gap, concepts like intentionality and consciousness are called to play different roles in accounts of the mind – roles which do not permit any confusion. The poster will highlight relevant differences in the philosophical climate as they project themselves in accounts of representation (following Gallagher 2008), and make salient the link between this climate and the role of cognition in philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Experimental Philosophy is a new and controversial movement that challenges some of the central findings within analytic philosophy by marshalling empirical evidence. The purpose of this short paper is twofold: to introduce some of the work done in experimental philosophy concerning issues in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and metaphysics and to connect this work with several debates within the philosophy of religion. The provisional conclusion is that philosophers of religion must critically engage (...) experimental philosophy. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Mind‐Body Dualism Behaviourism The Identity Theory Machine Functionalism Cognitive Psychology Artificial Intelligence and the Computer Model of the Mind Homuncular Functionalism and Other Teleological Theories Problems with Qualia and Consciousness Problems with Intentionality The ‘Language of Thought’ Hypothesis Instrumentalism Eliminativism and Neurophilosophy The Status of ‘Folk Psychology’.

The article examines the impact the grammarian/philosopher Bhartṛhari had on the way the ‘School of Recognition’ elaborated the notion that knowledge and consciousness have a close relationship with language. The paper first lays out Bhartṛhari’s ideas, showing that his theses are rationally defensible and philosophically refined. More specifically, it claims that the grammarian is defending a view which is in many respects similar to ‘higher-order theories’ of consciousness advanced by some contemporary philosophers of mind. In the second part, the paper (...) shows how Utpaladeva and Abhinavagupta adopted Bhartṛhari’s scheme without significant alteration. (shrink)

This collection should be welcomed by anyone working on the subtle interplay between theories of perception, internalism and externalism about mental and linguistic content, and the linguistic expression of mental states. Many of these connections have been put into focus by John Searle, and his views are here subjected to careful scrutiny from a variety of directions. The contributions do not sum to a general discussion of Searle's contributions to the philosophy of mind and language. There is little or (...) nothing here on, for example, the Chinese rooms and Strong AI, or on his more recent work on social construction and rationality. Such absences are an inevitable consequence of the sheer number of influential theses Searle has advanced over the decades. Instead, the locus of discussion is the systematic perspective most clearly set out in his work , a fact that lends integrity to the volume.The book is divided into two main parts, with inevitable links across the divide. The first is concerned with the intentionality of mental states, and the second with the intentionality of linguistic acts. The first kind of intentionality is, according to Searle, intrinsic, while the second is inherited from the first, with linguistic conventions affording the derivation. The two kinds of intentionality parallel one another …. (shrink)

The relationship between language and consciousness has been debated since ancient times, but the details have never been fully articulated. Certainly, there are animals that possess the same essential auditory and vocal systems as humans, but acquiring language is seemingly uniquely human. In this essay, we investigate the relationship between language and consciousness by demonstrating how language usage implies the self-awareness of the user. We show that the self-awareness faculty encompasses the language faculty and how this self-awareness, that is uniquely (...) human, enables us to create social realities through utilizing the social character of the language. We conclude that it is self-awareness that empowers humans to form collective intentionality and to structure societies. Establishing the relationship between self-awareness, language and society sheds light on connections between philosophy of mind, philosophy of language and philosophy of society. (shrink)

This article argues that nonverbal spontaneous expressions of mental states in human beings involve self-consciousness. We—language-using rational creatures—are capable of knowing our smiles, winces, and frustrated frowns in a self-conscious way. This distinguishes expressions from mere reflexes and mere physiological responses. Such a capacity is, further, essential to such forms of behavior. This is shown by the difficulty of constructing a coherent scenario where we—keeping our rational and conceptual capacities otherwise intact—can nonverbally express our mental states but where we lack (...) a capacity to self-consciously self-ascribe them. Moreover, the article argues that we should not take the connection between nonverbal spontaneous expression and self-consciousness to imply that expressions are intentional actions. Such an implication is due to a commonly accepted but false dichotomy of intentional action and mere behavior. (shrink)

This volume is a collection of fourteen essays by leading philosophers on issues concerning the nature, existence, and our knowledge of animal minds. The nature of animal minds has been a topic of interest to philosophers since the origins of philosophy, and recent years have seen significant philosophical engagement with the subject. However, there is no volume that represents the current state of play in this important and growing field. The purpose of this volume is to highlight the state (...) of the debate. The issues which are covered include whether and to what degree animals think in a language or in iconic structures, possess concepts, are conscious, self-aware, metacognize, attribute states of mind to others, and have emotions, as well as issues pertaining to our knowledge of and the scientific standards for attributing mental states to animals. (shrink)

A Philosophy for the Science of Animal Consciousness aims to advance Donald Griffin’s vision of the “final, crowning chapter of the Darwinian revolution” by firmly integrating animals within the science of consciousness. Although this field has largely neglected the questions of when and why consciousness evolved, this book champions a Darwinian philosophy where the experiences of other animals are put centre-stage in investigations of consciousness. This synopsis offers a summary of the book’s core arguments for the advancement of (...) a truly biological science of consciousness. This approach allows for an empirically rigorous investigation into what it is like to be a bat, a crow, a bee, or an octopus. (shrink)

This is a reply to the article by A.M. Dorozhkin, S.V. Shibarshina “Epistemological Randomization, or On Creativity in Science”. The comprehension of the general philosophical problems of scientific rationality is inextricably linked with the creative development of the world. An actual philosophical position can be formed on the basis of the intersection of several alternative approaches. The first is connected with the understanding of rationality as a special style of thinking of the epoch, in which the coordinate system of the (...) worldview is set. Such rationality sets general ideas about the cognizability of the world, and forms methodological and theoretical scientific strategies. Rationality outlines the boundaries of a scientist’s creative thought. Addressing the problem of the rationality of scientific creativity involves the use of a second approach, on the basis of which we can talk about the use of a variety of logics in describing the world. At the same time, confidence in their connection with reality allows us to hope for the formation of a holistic description of the problem in the future. In this case, we are dealing with an act of cognitive activity, as a result of which our consciousness throws a rational construct as a network on a situation of uncertainty, explaining and mastering it – the picture of the world is ordered. According to the third position, the evaluation of scientific results is flexible, plastic in nature: what is perceived as methodologically erroneous today may turn out to be a scientific discovery tomorrow. Thus, it can be stated that the creative thinking of the researcher is inscribed in certain cultural conditions of understanding reality, and this situation has a rationally given meaning. At the same time, the human mind always strives beyond the limits of the definable and categorically set, with the help of rationality, progressively groping the boundaries of the unknown and going beyond the limits of the possible. (shrink)

One of the most profound philosophical problems is the nature of mind and its relationship to the body. _A Brief Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind_ provides an introduction, written in clear language, to the various theories of the mind-body relationship, as well as a host of related philosophical discussions about mind and consciousness. The central theories, such as Cartesian Dualism, parallelism, epiphenomenalism, and supervenience among others, are presented in historical order. Their claims, their strengths and weaknesses, and how (...) they ultimately relate to one another and to other philosophical questions are explored objectively, allowing readers to decide for themselves which theories are best. (shrink)

From Plato's cave to Dennett's emergent systems, Teach Yourself Philosophy of Mind explores more than two millennia of thought on the knottiest of all philosophical questions. What is the mind? Is it a function of language, a neuropsychological artifact, or a metaphysical essence? Will machines ever be conscious? Is free will just an illusion? Beginning with the pre-Socratics and moving up through the latest in cognitive science, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, this book explores major thinking on consciousness, memory, creativity, (...) and other major concepts in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

This monograph introduces a meta-framework for conducting interdisciplinary research in the science of emotion, as well as a framework for a particular kind of theory of emotion. It can also be understood as a “cross-over” book that introduces neophytes to some of the current discourse and major challenges for an interdisciplinary approach to the science of emotion, especially from a philosophical perspective. It also engages experts from across the disciplines who are interested in conducting an interdisciplinary approach to research and (...) theorizing in the science of emotion, and introduces to them some of the contemporary debates in the philosophy of emotion. It does so by providing a taxonomy of theories of emotion which allows one to understand the contemporary interdisciplinary discourse in the science of emotion as a debate between four fundamental types of theories of emotion—realism, instrumentalism, eliminative-realism, and eliminativism—and which can be found or potentially found across the disciplines, and by arguing for foundational principles which can unify, without consilience, these four kinds of approaches as perspectives about the same object of inquiry. It also covers a wide range of concerns, including the problem of skepticism in the science of emotion, the problem of the underdetermination of a theory by the evidence, the question of the place of ordinary intuitions and ordinary language for a science of emotion, the mind-body problem, the hard problem of consciousness, the meta-hard problem of consciousness, the problem of intentionality, questions about the rationality of emotions and whether emotions can be a vehicle for knowledge, and the debate between cognitive and noncognitive theories in the philosophy of emotion. (shrink)

This text deals with a number of topics in philosophy, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. It includes essays on the laws of nature, biological aspects of the philosophy of mind, and the social aspects of rationality.

The Character of Mind provides a sweeping and accessible general introduction to the philosophy of mind. Colin McGinn covers all of the main topics--the mind-body problem, the nature of acquaintance, the relation between thought and language, agency, and the self.In particular, McGinn addresses the issue of consciousness, and the difficulty of combining the two very different perspectives on the mind that arise from introspection and from the observation of other people. This second edition has been updated with three new (...) cutting-edge chapters on consciousness, content, and cognitive science to make it the reader of choice on this vital topic. (shrink)

There are positive and negative lessons from Sartre: - Taking up some of his ideas one may arrive at a better model of consciousness in the analytic philosophy of mind; representing some of his ideas within the language and the models of a functionalist theory of mind makes them more accessible and inte¬grates them into the wider picture. - Sartre, as any philosopher, errs at some points, I believe; but these errors may be instruc¬tive, especially in as much as (...) they mirror some errors in some current theories of consciousness. This paper, therefore, is not a piece of Sartre scholarship, but an attempt of a “friendly take¬over” of some ideas I ascribe to Sartre into current models in the philosophy of mind. (shrink)

Metaethics is the study of metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and the philosophy of language, insofar as they relate to the subject matter of moral or, more broadly, normative discourse – the subject matter of what is good, bad, right or wrong, just, reasonable, rational, what we must or ought to do, or otherwise. But out of these four ‘core’ areas of philosophy, it is plausibly the philosophy of language that is most central to metaethics (...) – and not simply because ‘metaethics’ was for a long time construed more narrowly as a name for the study of moral language. The philosophy of language is central to metaethics because both the advantages of and the open problems facing different metaethical theories differ sharply over the answers those theories give to central questions in the philosophy of language. In fact, among the open problems over which such theories differ, are included particularly further problems in the philosophy of language. This article briefly surveys a range of broad categories of views in metaethics and both catalogues some of the principal issues faced by each in the philosophy of language, as well as how those arise out of their answers to more basic questions in the philosophy of language. I make no claim to completeness, only to raising a variety of important issues. (shrink)

This collection should be welcomed by anyone working on the subtle interplay between theories of perception, internalism and externalism about mental and linguistic content, and the linguistic expression of mental states. Many of these connections have been put into focus by John Searle, and his views are here subjected to careful scrutiny from a variety of directions. The contributions do not sum to a general discussion of Searle's contributions to the philosophy of mind and language. There is little or (...) nothing here on, for example, the Chinese rooms and Strong AI, or on his more recent work on social construction and rationality. Such absences are an inevitable consequence of the sheer number of influential theses Searle has advanced over the decades. Instead, the locus of discussion is the systematic perspective most clearly set out in his work, a fact that lends integrity to the volume.The book is divided into two main parts, with inevitable links across the divide. The first is concerned with the intentionality of mental states, and the second with the intentionality of linguistic acts. The first kind of intentionality is, according to Searle, intrinsic, while the second is inherited from the first, with linguistic conventions affording the derivation. The two kinds of intentionality parallel one another …. (shrink)

Elements of Mind provides a unique introduction to the main problems and debates in contemporary philosophy of mind. Author Tim Crane opposes those currently popular conceptions of the mind that divide mental phenomena into two very different kinds (the intentional and the qualitative) and proposes instead a challenging and unified theory of all the phenomena of mind. In light of this theory, Crane engages students with the central problems of the philosophy of mind--the mind-body problem, the problem of (...) intentionality (or mental representation), the problem of consciousness, and the problem of perception--and attempts to find solutions to these problems. A fresh and engaging exploration of the main issues in the philosophy of mind, Elements of Mind is easily accessible to students with no background in the subject. (shrink)

This article is an introduction to current issues in the field via a brief review of the history of the field since ryle's "the concept of mind" in 1949. The contributions of ordinary language philosophy and the first wave of identity theory provide the background for the development of the various brands of functionalism that occupy the center of attention today. Problems with functionalism concerned with mental representation, "qualia" and other presumed features of conscious experience are examined. There is (...) an extensive bibliography. (shrink)