Abstract

Naturalism is currently the most vibrantly developing approach to philosophy, with naturalised methodologies being applied across all the philosophical disciplines. One of the areas naturalism has been focussing upon is the mind, traditionally viewed as a topic hard to reconcile with the naturalistic worldview. A number of questions have been pursued in this context. What is the place of the mind in the world? How should we study the mind as a natural phenomenon? What is the significance of cognitive science research for philosophical debates? In this book, philosophical questions about the mind are asked in the context of recent developments in cognitive science, evolutionary theory, psychology, and the project of the naturalisation. Much of the focus is upon what we have learned by studying natural mental mechanisms as well as designing artificial ones. In the case of natural mental mechanisms, this includes consideration of such issues as the significance of deficits in these mechanisms for psychiatry. The significance of the evolutionary context for mental mechanisms as well as questions regarding rationality and wisdom is also explored. Mechanistic and functional models of the mind are used to throw new light on discussions regarding issues of explanation, reduction and the realisation of mental phenomena. Finally, naturalistic approaches are used to look anew at such traditional philosophical issues as the correspondence of mind to world and presuppositions of scientific research. CONTENTS Introduction 1 Naturalizing the Mind Marcin Miłkowski and Konrad Talmont-Kaminski Chapter One 12 Reverse Engineering in Cognitive Science Marcin Miłkowski Chapter Two 30 Carving the Mind by its Joints: Culture-bound Psychiatric Disorders as Natural Kinds Samuli Pöyhönen Chapter Three 49 Naturalizing Wisdom Mark Alfino Chapter Four 71 A Biological Perspective on the Nature of Cognition: Some Remarks for a Naturalistic Program Alvaro Moreno Chapter Five 86 Do Animals See Objects? Paweł Grabarczyk Chapter Six 103 Grounding the Origins of the State in the Evolution of the Mind Benoît Dubreuil Chapter Seven 119 Realization and Robustness: Naturalizing Nonreductive Physicalism Markus I. Eronen Chapter Eight 138 Can the Mental be Causally Efficacious? Panu Raatikainen Chapter Nine 167 On Reduction and Interfield Integration in Neuroscience Witold M. Hensel Chapter Ten 182 Challenges to Cartesian Materialism: Understanding Consciousness and the Mind-World Relation Jonathan Knowles Chapter Eleven 203 Qualia as Intrinsic Properties Tadeusz Ciecierski Chapter Twelve 216 A HOT Solution to the Problem of the Explanatory Gap Dimitris Platchias Chapter Thirteen 232 Naturalizing Epistemology for Autonomous Systems Jaime Gomez Ramirez Chapter Fourteen 248 How Truth could be Reduced? Field’s Deflationism as a Kind of Supervenience Thesis Krystyna Bielecka Chapter Fifteen 262 How to Naturalize Truth María J. Frápolli