Mandik offers readers an encompassing, up-to-date and engagingly written textbook. The book along with its companion blog , is a useful, accessible, resource. All the problems are explored that an introductory course in philosophy of mind should explore. And the delivery is always rigorous, concise, clear and stress-free. Given its emphasis on self-discovery, and given its scope and accessible style, the book can also be enjoyed (and easily digested) outside academia by any casual reader curious about what philosophers of mind are actually up to these days. Not only is This is Philosophy of Mind a textbook from which many undergrads will learn a good deal; it is also one that many will genuinely enjoy. - Minds and Machines, June 2014
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 re