Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind showcases the leading contributors to the field, debating the major questions in philosophy of mind today.
- Comprises 20 newly commissioned essays on hotly debated issues in the philosophy of mind
- Written by a cast of leading experts in their fields, essays take opposing views on 10 central contemporary debates
- A thorough introduction provides a comprehensive background to the issues explored
- Organized into three sections which explore the ontology of the mental, nature of the mental content, and the nature of consciousness
Table of Contents:
Notes on Contributors ix
Introduction
Jonathan Cohen xii
PART I MENTAL CONTENT 1
Is There a Viable Notion of Narrow Mental Content? 3
1 Cognitive Content and Propositional Attitude Attributions
Gabriel Segal 5
2 There Is No Viable Notion of Narrow Content
Sarah Sawyer 20
Is Externalism about Mental Content Compatible with Privileged Access? 35
3 Externalism and Privileged Access Are Consistent
Anthony Brueckner 37
4 Externalism and Privileged Access Are Inconsistent
Michael McKinsey 53
Is the Intentional Essentially Normative? 67
5 Resisting Normativism in Psychology
Georges Rey 69
6 Normativism Defended
Ralph Wedgwood 85
Is There Non-Conceptual Content? 103
7 The Revenge of the Given
Jerry Fodor 105
8 Are There Different Kinds of Content?
Richard G. Heck Jr 117
PART II PHYSICALISM 139
Is Non-Reductive Materialism Viable? 141
9 Everybody Has Got It: A Defense of Non-Reductive Materialism
Louise Antony 143
10 The Evolving Fortunes of Eliminative Materialism
Paul M. Churchland 160
Should Physicalists Be A Priori Physicalists? 183
11 A Priori Physicalism
Frank Jackson 185
12 On the Limits of A Priori Physicalism
Brian P. McLaughlin 200
Is There an Unresolved Problem of Mental Causation? 225
13 Causation and Mental Causation
Jaegwon Kim 227
14 Mental Causation, or Something Near Enough
Barry Loewer 243
PART III THE PLACE OF CONSCIOUSNESS IN NATURE 265
Is Consciousness Ontologically Emergent from the Physical? 267
15 Dualist Emergentism
Martine Nida-Rümelin 269
16 Against Ontologically Emergent Consciousness
David Braddon-Mitchell 287
Are Phenomenal Characters and Intentional Contents of Experiences Identical? 301
17 New Troubles for the Qualia Freak
Michael Tye 303
18 A Case for Qualia
Sydney Shoemaker 319
Is Awareness of Our Mental Acts a Kind of Perceptual Consciousness? 333
19 All Consciousness Is Perceptual
Jesse Prinz 335
20 Mental Action and Self-Awareness (I)
Christopher Peacocke 358
Index 377
About the Author :
Brian P. McLaughlin is Professor and Chair in the philosophy department at Rutgers University. He has published widely in philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and is the co-editor of the classic collection on the philosophy of Donald Davidson, Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald Davidson (Blackwell, 1988), editor of Dretske and His Critics (Blackwell, 1991) and the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Mind.
Jonathan Cohen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. He is the the author of numerous papers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of language, metaphysics, and perception. Much of his recent work has focused on the metaphysics of color properties.
Review :
"The volume succeeds in crystallizing many of the contentious issues in the field, whilst developing the conceptual landscape and identifying new issues. This is a compelling publication that is thoughtfully constructed and is essential reading for anyone with an interest in the contemporary debates in philosophy of mind." (Philosophical Psychology, 14 December 2011)
"This book gives the reader a vivid sense of the philosophy of mind as a living activity. The chapters of this book provide an excellent introduction to ongoing debates about consciousness, intentionality, and physicalism. At the same time, many of the chapters make important contributions to the subject in their own right."
David Chalmers, Australian National University
