This is Philosophy of Mind – An Introduction

Pete Mandik is Professor of Philosophy at William Paterson University, New Jersey. He is the author of Key Terms in Philosophy of Mind (2010), co-author of Cognitive Science: An Introduction to the Mind and Brain (2006), and co-editor of Philosophy and the Neurosciences: A Reader (2001).

How to Use This Book xv Acknowledgments xvii 1 Meet Your Mind 1 Aspects of Mind 1 Thought and experience 1 Conscious and unconscious 2 Qualia 3 Sensory perception 3 Emotion 4 Imagery 4 Will and action 5 Self 5 Propositional attitudes 5 Philosophical Problems 6 Mind body problem 7 Other problems 9 Conclusion 14 Annotated Bibliography 14 2 Substance Dualism 15 Arguments for Substance Dualism 15 Leibniz s law arguments 16 Criticism of Leibniz s law arguments: Intensional fallacy 19 Explanatory gap arguments 20 Criticisms of explanatory gap arguments 21 Modal arguments 22 Criticism of the modal arguments: Does conceivability eally entail possibility? 23 Mind Body Interaction as a Problem for Substance Dualism 24 Princess Elisabeth s objection 25 The dualistic alternatives to Cartesian interactionism 26 Conclusion 27 Annotated Bibliography 28 3 Property Dualism 29 Introducing Property Dualism: Qualia and the Brain 29 The Inverted Spectrum 30 Attack of the Zombies 32 The Knowledge Argument 34 The Explanatory Gap Argument 37 Does Property Dualism Lead to Epiphenomenalism? 39 How Do You Know You re Not a Zombie? 41 Conclusion 42 Annotated Bibliography 42 4 Idealism, Solipsism, and Panpsychism 45 Solipsism: Is It Just Me? 46 Idealism: It s All in the Mind 50 Berkeley s argument from pain 51 Berkeley s argument from perceptual relativity: Berkeley s bucket 51 Berkeley s Nothing but an idea can resemble an idea 52 Berkeley s master argument 52 Why Berkeley is not a solipsist 53 Arguing against idealism 53 Panpsychism: Mind Is Everywhere 54 The analogy argument 55 The nothing from nothing argument 56 The evolutionary argument 57 Arguing against panpsychism: The combination problem 57 Conclusion 58 Annotated Bibliography 59 5 Behaviorism and Other Minds 61 Behaviorism: Introduction and Overview 61 The History of Behaviorism 63 Ludwig Wittgenstein and the private language argument 64 Gilbert Ryle versus the ghost in the machine 66 Objections to Behaviorism 67 The qualia objection 67 Sellars s objection 68 The Geach Chisholm objection 69 The Philosophical Problem of Other Minds 70 The rise and fall of the argument from analogy 71 Denying the asymmetry between self-knowledge and knowledge of other minds 72 Conclusion 73 Annotated Bibliography 74 6 Mind as Brain 77 Introducing Mind Brain Identity Theory 77 Advantages of Mind Brain Identity Theory 78 A Very Brief Overview of Neuroscience 79 Major parts and functions of the nervous system 80 Major parts and functions of the brain 80 Neurons, neural activations, and brain states 81 Lesions, imaging, and electrophysiology 81 Localism and holism 81 Learning and synaptic plasticity 82 Computational neuroscience and connectionism 82 Neural correlates of consciousness 83 On pain and c-fibers 83 Some General Remarks about Identity 84 Arguments against Mind Brain Identity Theory 86 The zombie argument 86 The multiple realizability argument 87 Max Black s distinct property argument 89 Conclusion 90 Annotated Bibliography 91 7 Thinking Machines 93 Can a Machine Think? 93 Alan Turing, Turing Machines, and the Turing Test 94 Alan Turing 95 Turing machines 95 The Turing test 96 Searle s Chinese Room Argument 97 Responses to the Chinese Room Argument 98 The Silicon Chip Replacement Thought Experiment 99 Symbolicism versus Connectionism 102 Conclusion 105 Annotated Bibliography 106 8 Functionalism 109 The Gist of Functionalism 109 A Brief History of Functionalism 111 Arguments for Functionalism 112 The causal argument 112 The multiple realization argument 114 The Varieties of Functionalism 117 Turing machine functionalism 117 Analytic functionalism versus empirical functionalism 118 Arguments against Functionalism 119 Adapting the zombie argument to be against functionalism 120 Adapting the Chinese room argument to be against functionalism 121 Conclusion 122 Annotated Bibliography 122 9 Mental Causation 123 The Problem of Mental Causation 123 The causal closure of the physical 124 The problem for substance dualists 126 The problem for property dualists 126 Basic Views of Interaction 127 Interactionism 127 Parallelism 128 Epiphenomenalism 129 Reductionism 130 Qualia and Epiphenomenalism 130 Whether qualia-based epiphenomenalism conflicts with phenomenal self-knowledge 131 Dennett s zimboes 131 Anomalous Monism 132 The Explanatory Exclusion Argument 136 Conclusion 137 Annotated Bibliography 137 10 Eliminative Materialism 139 Introduction and Overview 139 Basic Ingredients of Contemporary Eliminative Materialism 140 Folk psychology as a theory 141 The contrast between reduction and elimination 142 Putting the ingredients together 143 Arguments for Propositional Attitude Eliminative Materialism 143 Folk psychology is a stagnant research program 144 Folk psychology is committed to propositional attitudes having a sentential structure that is unsupported by neuroscientific research 144 Folk psychology makes commitments to features of mental states that lead to an unacceptable epiphenomenalism 145 Arguments against Propositional Attitude Eliminative Materialism 145 Eliminative materialism is self-refuting 146 The theory theory is false 146 Folk psychology is indispensable 147 Introspection reveals the existence of propositional attitudes 148 Qualia Eliminative Materialism: Quining Qualia 149 Conclusion 152 Annotated Bibliography 153 11 Perception, Mental Imagery, and Emotion 155 Perception 155 Direct realism and the argument from illusion 155 Philosophical theories of perception 158 Mental Imagery 161 How similar are mental images to other mental states? 162 Is mental imagery the basis for mental states such as thoughts? 163 To what degree, if any, is mental imagery genuinely imagistic or picture-like? 163 Emotion 165 What distinguishes emotions from other mental states? 166 What distinguishes different emotions from each other? 167 The difficulties in giving a unifi ed account of the emotions 167 Conclusion 168 Annotated Bibliography 168 12 The Will: Willpower and Freedom 171 The Problem of Free Will and Determinism 171 Sources of Determinism 173 General remarks 173 Physical determinism 174 Theological determinism 175 Logical determinism 175 Ethical determinism 176 Psychological determinism 176 Compatibilism 177 Incompatibilism 178 The origination or causal chain argument 179 The consequence argument 180 What Might Free Will Be, If There Were Any Such Thing? 181 Freedom aside for the moment, what is the will? 181 What might the freedom of the will consist in? 183 Conclusion 185 Annotated Bibliography 185 13 Intentionality and Mental Representation 187 Introducing Intentionality 187 The Inconsistent Triad of Intentionality 188 Defending each individual proposition 189 Spelling out the inconsistency 190 Internalism versus Externalism 190 For externalism: The Twin Earth thought experiment 192 Against externalism: Swampman and the brain in the vat 193 Theories of Content Determination 194 Resemblance theory 194 Interpretational semantics 195 Conceptual role semantics 196 Causal or informational theory 198 Teleological evolutionary theory 199 Conclusion 200 Annotated Bibliography 200 14 Consciousness and Qualia 203 Optimism about Explaining Consciousness 203 Focusing on Several Different Uses of the Word Conscious 204 Creature consciousness 204 Transitive consciousness 204 State consciousness 205 Phenomenal consciousness 205 Rosenthal s Higher Order Thought Theory of Consciousness 206 An objection to the HOT theory: Introspectively implausible 209 Another objection to the HOT theory: Too intellectual 209 First Order Representation Theories of Consciousness 211 The transparency argument for first order representationalism 213 The Spot argument for fi rst order representationalism 214 Conclusion 214 Annotated Bibliography 215 15 Is This the End? Personal Identity, the Self, and Life after Death 217 Problems of Personal Identity 217 The Problem of Persistence 219 Approaches to the Problem of Persistence 220 The psychological approach 220 The fission problem for the psychological approach 221 The somatic or bodily approach 222 Temporal parts theory aka perdurantism aka four-dimensionalism 224 The no-self view 225 Life after Death 227 Substance dualism and the afterlife 228 Mind brain identity theory and the afterlife 228 Functionalism and the afterlife 229 Temporal parts and the afterlife 229 No-self and the afterlife 230 Conclusion 230 Annotated Bibliography 230 Index 233