This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind...

In The Emergent Self, William Hasker joins one of the most heated debates in contemporary analytic philosophy, that over the nature of mind.

Ranging across both standard philosophical territory and the landscape of cutting-edge cognitive science, Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Second Edition, is a vivid and engaging introduction to key issues, research, and opportunities in the field.Starting with the vision of mindware as software and debates between realists, instrumentalists, and eliminativists, Andy Clark takes students on a no-holds-barred journey through connectionism, dynamical systems, and real-world robotics before moving on to the frontiers of cognitive technologies, enactivism, predictive coding, and (...) the extended mind. Throughout, he highlights challenging issues in an effort to engage students in active debate. Each chapter opens with a brief sketch of a major research tradition or perspective, followed by concise critical discussions dealing with key topics and problems. (shrink)

What psychological and philosophical significance should we attach to recent efforts at computer simulations of human cognitive capacities? In answering this question, I find it useful to distinguish what I will call "strong" AI from "weak" or "cautious" AI. According to weak AI, the principal value of the computer in the study of the mind is that it gives us a very powerful tool. For example, it enables us to formulate and test hypotheses in a more rigorous and precise fashion. (...) But according to strong AI, the computer is not merely a tool in the study of the mind; rather, the appropriately programmed computer really is a mind, in the sense that computers given the right programs can be literally said to. (shrink)

Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science invites readers to join in up-to-the-minute conceptual discussions of the fundamental issues, problems, and opportunities in cognitive science. Written by one of the most renowned scholars in the field, this vivid and engaging introductory text relates the story of the search for a cognitive scientific understanding of mind. This search is presented as a no-holds-barred journey from early work in artificial intelligence, through connectionist (artificial neural network) counter-visions, and on to neuroscience, (...) artificial life, dynamics, and robotics. The journey ends with some wide-ranging and provocative speculation about the complex coadaptive dance between mind, culture, and technology. Each chapter opens with a brief sketch of a major research tradition or perspective, followed by short yet substantial critical discussions dealing with key topics and problems. Ranging across both standard philosophical territory and the landscape of cutting-edge cognitive science, Clark highlights challenging issues in an effort to engage readers in active debate. Topics covered include mental causation; machine intelligence; the nature and status of folk psychology; the hardware/software distinction; emergence; relations between life and mind; the nature of perception, cognition, and action; and the continuity (or otherwise) of high-level human intelligence with other forms of adaptive response. Numerous illustrations, text boxes, and extensive suggestions for further reading enhance the text's utility. Helpful appendices provide background information on dualism, behaviorism, identity theory, consciousness, and more. An exceptional text for introductory and more advanced courses in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, Mindware is also essential reading for anyone interested in these fascinating and ever-changing fields. (shrink)

This is a unique book. It is excellently written, crammed with information, wise and a pleasure to read.' ---Daniel C. Dennett, Tufts University.

Eliminative materialism is the thesis that our common-sense conception of psychological phenomena constitutes a radically false theory, a theory so fundamentally defective that both the principles and the ontology of that theory will eventually be displaced, rather than smoothly reduced, by completed neuroscience. Our mutual understanding and even our introspection may then be reconstituted within the conceptual framework of completed neuroscience, a theory we may expect to be more powerful by far than the common-sense psychology it displaces, and more substantially (...) integrated within physical science generally. My purpose in this paper is to explore these projections, especially as they bear on (1) the principal elements of common-sense psychology: the propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, etc.), and (2) the conception of rationality in which these elements figure. (shrink)

A pioneering work in the philosophy of mind, Content and Consciousness brings together the approaches of philosophers and scientists to the mind--a connection that must occur if genuine analysis of the mind is to be made. This unified approach permits the most forbiddingly mysterious mental phenomenon--consciousness--to be broken down into several distinct phenomena, and these are each given a foundation in the physical activity of the brain. This paperback edition contains a preface placing the book in the context of recent (...) work in the area. (shrink)

The paper explores the distinction between two doctrines, both of which inform theory construction in much of modern cognitive psychology: the representational theory of mind and the computational theory of mind. According to the former, propositional attitudes are to be construed as relations that organisms bear to mental representations. According to the latter, mental processes have access only to formal (nonsemantic) properties of the mental representations over which they are defined.The following claims are defended: (1) That the traditional dispute between (...) “rational” and “naturalistic” psychology is plausibly viewed as an argument about the status of the computational theory of mind. Rational psychologists accept a formality condition on the specification of mental processes; naturalists do not. (2) That to accept the formality condition is to endorse a version of methodological solipsism. (3) That the acceptance of some such condition is warranted, at least for that part of psychology which concerns itself with theories of the mental causation of behavior. This is because: (4) such theories require nontransparent taxonomies of mental states; and (5) nontransparent taxonomies individuate mental states without reference to their semantic properties. Equivalently, (6) nontransparent taxonomies respect the way that the organism represents the object of its propositional attitudes toitself, and it is this representation which functions in the causation of behavior.The final section of the paper considers the prospect for a naturalistic psychology: one which defines its generalizations over relations between mental representations and their environmental causes, thus seeking to account for the semantic properties of propositional attitudes. Two related arguments are proposed, both leading to the conclusion that no such research strategy is likely to prove fruitful. (shrink)

Ethologists and others studying animal behavior in a spirit are in need of a descriptive language and method that are neither anachronistically bound by behaviorist scruples nor prematurely committed to particular Just such an interim descriptive method can be found in intentional system theory. The use of intentional system theory is illustrated with the case of the apparently communicative behavior of vervet monkeys. A way of using the theory to generate data - including usable, testable data - is sketched. The (...) underlying assumptions of this approach can be seen to ally it directly with theorizing in evolutionary biology, which has recently come under attack from Stephen Gould and Richard Lewontin, who castigate it as the Their arguments, which are strongly analogous to B. F, Skinner's arguments against point to certain pitfalls that attend the careless exercise of such thinking (and rival varieties of thinking as well), but do not constitute a fundamental objection to either adaptationist theorizing or its cousin, intentional system theory. (shrink)

It is often argued that higher-level special-science properties cannot be causally efficacious since the lower-level physical properties on which they supervene are doing all the causal work. This claim is usually derived from an exclusion principle stating that if a higher-level property F supervenes on a physical property F* that is causally sufficient for a property G, then F cannot cause G. We employ an account of causation as difference-making to show that the truth or falsity of this principle is (...) a contingent matter and derive necessary and sufficient conditions under which a version of it holds. We argue that one important instance of the principle, far from undermining non-reductive physicalism, actually supports the causal autonomy of certain higher-level properties. (shrink)

Over the last two decades, debates over the viability of commonsense psychology have been center stage in both cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. Eliminativists have argued that advances in cognitive science and neuroscience will ultimately justify a rejection of our "folk" theory of the mind, and of its ontology. In the first half of this book Stich, who was at one time a leading advocate of eliminativism, maintains that even if the sciences develop in the ways that eliminativists (...) foresee, none of the arguments for ontological elimination are tenable. Rather than being resolved by science, he contends, these ontological disputes will be settled by a pragmatic process in which social and political considerations have a major role to play. In later chapters, Stich argues that the widespread worry about "naturalizing" psychological properties is deeply confused, since there is no plausible account of what naturalizing requires on which the failure of the naturalization project would lead to eliminativism. He also offers a detailed analysis of the many different notions of folk psychology to be found in philosophy and psychology, and argues that simulation theory, which purports to be an alternative to folk psychology, is not supported by recent experimental findings. (shrink)

A dual-language edition presenting Descartes's original Latin text of his greatest work, with a facing-page authoritative English translation.

This interdisciplinary work addresses the question, "What role should psychological conceptualization play for thinkers who believe that the brain is the organ of the mind?" It offers readers something unique both by systematically comparing the writings of eliminativist philosophers of mind with the writings of the most committed proponents of biological psychiatry, and by critically scrutinizing their shared anti-anthropomorphism from the standpoint of a diagnostician and therapist. Contradicting the contemporary assumption that common sense psychology has already been proven futile, and (...) we are just waiting for an adequate scientifically-based replacement, this book provides explicit philosophical and psychological arguments showing why, if they did not already have both cognitive and psychodynamic psychologies, philosophers and scientists would have to invent them to better understand brains. (Series A). (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work was reproduced from the original artifact, and remains as true to the original work as possible. Therefore, you will see the original copyright references, library stamps (as most of these works have been housed in our most important libraries around the world), and other notations in the work. This work is in the public domain (...) in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. As a reproduction of a historical artifact, this work may contain missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

A new approach for defining causality and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degrees of blame, and causal explanation. Causality plays a central role in the way people structure the world; we constantly seek causal explanations for our observations. But what does it even mean that an event C "actually caused" event E? The problem of defining actual causation goes beyond mere philosophical speculation. For example, in many legal arguments, it is precisely what needs to be established in order (...) to determine responsibility. The philosophy literature has been struggling with the problem of defining causality since Hume. In this book, Joseph Halpern explores actual causality, and such related notions as degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. The goal is to arrive at a definition of causality that matches our natural language usage and is helpful, for example, to a jury deciding a legal case, a programmer looking for the line of code that cause some software to fail, or an economist trying to determine whether austerity caused a subsequent depression. Halpern applies and expands an approach to causality that he and Judea Pearl developed, based on structural equations. He carefully formulates a definition of causality, and building on this, defines degree of responsibility, degree of blame, and causal explanation. He concludes by discussing how these ideas can be applied to such practical problems as accountability and program verification. Technical details are generally confined to the final section of each chapter and can be skipped by non-mathematical readers. (shrink)

Breaking new ground in the debate about the relation of mind and body, David Armstrong's classic text - first published in 1968 - remains the most compelling and comprehensive statement of the view that the mind is material or physical. In the preface to this new edition, the author reflects on the book's impact and considers it in the light of subsequent developments. He also provides a bibliography of all the key writings to have appeared in the materialist debate.

Woodward's long awaited book is an attempt to construct a comprehensive account of causation explanation that applies to a wide variety of causal and explanatory claims in different areas of science and everyday life. The book engages some of the relevant literature from other disciplines, as Woodward weaves together examples, counterexamples, criticisms, defenses, objections, and replies into a convincing defense of the core of his theory, which is that we can analyze causation by appeal to the notion of manipulation.

Investigations of the function of consciousness in human information processing have focused mainly on two questions: (1) where does consciousness enter into the information processing sequence and (2) how does conscious processing differ from preconscious and unconscious processing. Input analysis is thought to be initially "preconscious," "pre-attentive," fast, involuntary, and automatic. This is followed by "conscious," "focal-attentive" analysis which is relatively slow, voluntary, and flexible. It is thought that simple, familiar stimuli can be identified preconsciously, but conscious processing is needed (...) to identify complex, novel stimuli. Conscious processing has also been thought to be necessary for choice, learning and memory, and the organization of complex, novel responses, particularly those requiring planning, reflection, or creativity. (shrink)

This reply to five continuing commentaries on my 1991 target article on “Is human information processing conscious” focuses on six related issues: 1) whether focal attentive processing replaces consciousness as a causal agent in third-person viewable human information processing, 2)whether consciousness can be dissociated from human information processing, 3) continuing disputes about definitions of "consciousness" and about what constitutes a “conscious process” , 4) how observer-relativity in psychology relates (and does not relate) to relativity in physics, 5) whether the first-person (...) viewable causal efficacy of consciousness counts as ‘real’ causal efficacy and 6) a clarification of the sense in which first- and third-person causal accounts of mental processing are complementary and mutually irreducible. (shrink)

Phenomenal awareness, the ability to be aware of one's sensations and feelings, emerges from the capacity of evolved brains to represent their own cognitive processes by iterating and self-reapplying the cortical operations that generate representations of the outer world. Search for the neuronal substrate of awareness therefore converges with the search for the neuronal code through which brains represent their environment. The hypothesis is put forward that the mammalian brain uses two complementary representational strategies. One consists of the generation of (...) neurons responding selectively to particular constellations of features, and is based on selective recombination of inputs in hierarchically structured feed-forward architectures. The other relies on the dynamic association of large numbers of distributed neurons into functionally coherent cell assemblies which as a whole represent a content of cognition. Arguments and data are presented in favor of the second strategy as the one according to which meta-representations that support awareness are established. My hypothesis is that such distributed representations self-organize through transient synchronization of the oscillatory activity. Evidence showing that similar brain states are required both for the occurrence of these synchronization phenomena and for awareness is provided. (shrink)

Jaegwon Kim’s causal exclusion argument has rarely been evaluated from an empirical perspective. This is puzzling because its conclusion seems to be making a testable claim about the world: supervenient properties are causally inefficacious. An empirical perspective, however, reveals Kim’s argument to rest on a mistaken conception about how to test whether a property is causally efficacious. Moreover, the empirical perspective makes visible a metaphysical bias that Kim brings to his argument that involves a principle of non-inclusion.

Jaegwon Kim’s causal exclusion argument has rarely been evaluated from an empirical perspective. This is puzzling because its conclusion seems to be making a testable claim about the world: supervenient properties are causally inefficacious. An empirical perspective, however, reveals Kim’s argument to rest on a mistaken conception about how to test whether a property is causally efficacious. Moreover, the empirical perspective makes visible a metaphysical bias that Kim brings to his argument that involves a principle of non‐inclusion.

As Louisiana and Cuba emerged from slavery in the late nineteenth century, each faced the question of what rights former slaves could claim. Degrees of Freedom compares and contrasts these two societies in which slavery was destroyed by war, and citizenship was redefined through social and political upheaval. Both Louisiana and Cuba were rich in sugar plantations that depended on an enslaved labor force. After abolition, on both sides of the Gulf of Mexico, ordinary people-cane cutters and cigar workers, laundresses (...) and labor organizers-forged alliances to protect and expand the freedoms they had won. But by the beginning of the twentieth century, Louisiana and Cuba diverged sharply in the meanings attributed to race and color in public life, and in the boundaries placed on citizenship. Louisiana had taken the path of disenfranchisement and state-mandated racial segregation; Cuba had enacted universal manhood suffrage and had seen the emergence of a transracial conception of the nation. What might explain these differences? Moving through the cane fields, small farms, and cities of Louisiana and Cuba, Rebecca Scott skillfully observes the people, places, legislation, and leadership that shaped how these societies adjusted to the abolition of slavery. The two distinctive worlds also come together, as Cuban exiles take refuge in New Orleans in the 1880s, and black soldiers from Louisiana garrison small towns in eastern Cuba during the 1899 U.S. military occupation. Crafting her narrative from the words and deeds of the actors themselves, Scott brings to life the historical drama of race and citizenship in postemancipation societies. (shrink)

The philosophical theory of scientific explanation proposed here involves a radically new treatment of causality that accords with the pervasively statistical character of contemporary science. Wesley C. Salmon describes three fundamental conceptions of scientific explanation--the epistemic, modal, and ontic. He argues that the prevailing view is untenable and that the modal conception is scientifically out-dated. Significantly revising aspects of his earlier work, he defends a causal/mechanical theory that is a version of the ontic conception. Professor Salmon's theory furnishes a robust (...) argument for scientific realism akin to the argument that convinced twentieth-century physical scientists of the existence of atoms and molecules. To do justice to such notions as irreducibly statistical laws and statistical explanation, he offers a novel account of physical randomness. The transition from the "reviewed view" of scientific explanation to the causal/mechanical model requires fundamental rethinking of basic explanatory concepts. (shrink)

If the decades of the forties through the sixties were dominated by discussion of Hempel's “covering law“ explication of explanation, that of the seventies was preoccupied with Salmon's “statistical relevance” conception, which emerged as the principal alternative to Hempel's enormously influential account. Readers of Wesley C. Salmon's Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World, therefore, ought to find it refreshing to discover that its author has not remained content with a facile defense of his previous investigations; on the (...) contrary, Salmon offers an original account of different kinds of explications, advances additional criticisms of various alternative theories, and elaborates a novel “two-tiered“ analysis of explanation that tacitly depends upon a “two-tiered” account of homogeneity. Indeed, if the considerations that follow are correct, Salmon has not merely refined his statistical relevance account but has actually abandoned it in favor of a “causal/mechanistic“ construction. This striking development suggests that the theory of explanation is likely to remain as lively an arena of debate in the eighties as it has been in the past. (shrink)

This paper discusses several distinct process theories of causality offered in recent years by Phil Dowe and me. It addresses problems concerning the explication of causal process, causal interaction, and causal transmission, whether given in terms of transmission of marks, transmission of invariant or conserved quantities, or mere possession of conserved quantities. Renouncing the mark-transmission and invariant quantity criteria, I accept a conserved quantity theory similar to Dowe's--differing basically with respect to causal transmission. This paper also responds to several fundamental (...) constructive criticisms contained in Christopher Hitchcock's discussion of both the mark-transmission and the conserved quantity theories. (shrink)