Philosophy of Mind and Cognition: An Introduction

This is a fully revised and updated edition of David Braddon–Mitchell and Frank Jackson’s popular and respected introduction to philosophy of mind and cognition. The revisions are designed to make the volume even more useful for teachers and students, and to keep it current, ensuring that the most recent developments in the philosophy of mind and cognitive science are brought together into a coherent, accessible whole. New material includes: a section on some of Descartes’ famous objections to materialism along with a discussion of the objection from Gödel’s theorem; substantial additions to the discussion of qualia including a discussion of representationalist accounts of experience and of the zombie argument; additional coverage of the view that psychology is autonomous; a new substantial chapter on connectionism and its bearing on the language of thought debate; and much more.

Preface. Part I: From Dualism to Common–sense Functionalism . 1. The Flight from Dualism. The Issue Between Dualism and Materialism. Supervenience. Possible Worlds: An Introduction. Annotated Reading. 2. Behaviourism and Beyond. The Case for Behaviourism. Methodological and Revisionary Behaviourism. Problems for Behaviourism. The Path to Functionalism via a Causal Theory. The Causal Theory of Mind. Annotated Reading. 3. Common–sense Functionalism. Multiple Realizability. Common–sense Functionalism Expounded. Interconnections without Circularity. Behaviour Characterized in Terms of Environmental Impact. What Does Common Sense Say about the Mind?. Annotated Reading. Part II: Rivals and Objections . 4. Theory of Reference. The Description Theory of Reference. The Causal Theory. The Necessary A Posteriori. Annotated Reading. 5. Empirical Functionalisms. Common–sense Functional Roles as a Reference–fixing Device. Chauvinism and Empirical Functionalism. Annotated Reading. 6. The Identity Theory. The Identity Theory and Functionalism. Some Early Objections to the Identity Theory. Token–Token versus Type–Type Identity Theories. Essentialism about Psychological States. Annotated Reading. 7. Four Challenges to Functionalism. The China Brain. The Chinese Room. Blockhead. The Zombie Objection. Annotated Reading. 8. Phenomenal Qualities and Consciousness. The Question of Qualia. Consciousness. Representationalism and Perceptual Experience. Annotated Reading. 9. Instrumentalism and Interpretationism. Instrumentalism. Interpretationism. Annotated Reading. Part III: About Content . 10. The Language of Thought. The Language of Thought Hypothesis. The Map Alternative. Annotated Reading. 11. Content. What is the Problem of Content?. The Map Theory. The Internal Sentence Theory. Problems for the Map–system Theory. Problems and Questions for the Internal Sentence Theory. Annotated Reading. 12. Connectionism. Connectionism and the Map–system Theory. Annotated Reading. 13. Broad and Narrow Content. Narrow Content. Broad Content. Deflationism about Broad Content versus Scepticism about Narrow Content. Annotated Reading. Part IV: Explaining Behaviour: Eliminativism and Realism. 14. Eliminative Materialism. The Case for Eliminativism. The Functionalist Reply to Eliminativism. Natural Kinds and Scientific Reductions. Annotated Reading. 15. Psychological Explanation and Common–sense Functionalism. Three Questions for Common–sense Functionalism. Annotated Reading. Glossary. Bibliography. Index

David Braddon–Mitchell is Reader in Philosophy at the University of Sydney. He has published widely in philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Frank Jackson is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He is the author of Conditionals (Blackwell, 1987) and his John Locke Lectures were published as From Metaphysics to Ethics in 1998.

"This new edition of Braddon–Mitchell and Jackson′s already excellent textbook will be a very welcome addition to the philosophy of mind literature." Simon Prosser, University of St Andrews