Elements of mind

• издание: 2001
• издателство: Oxford University Press
• език: английски
• корици: меки
• страници: 10
• ISBN: 0192892975

категории: Нехудожествена литература, Българска литература, Философия. Психология

In this book I attempt to give an account of what I see to be the main problems of the philosophy of mind: the mind-body problem, the problem of intentionality (or mental representation), the problem of consciousness, and the problem of perception. I also attempt to give solutions to these problems. I do not, of course, pretend that these solutions are without problems of their own, but it seems to me that a book with an opinionated approach to philosophical problems tends to be more interesting than a bland survey. Nor do I pretend, when talking about 'the main problems of philosophy of mind, that these are the only problems, or that there is only one 'mind-body problem' or ‘problem of consciousness'. On the contrary, in my discussion of these problems I will often distinguish a number of things falling under these names, although some of them I do not discuss in any detail. Nonetheless, it seems to me that the traditional names for the problems provide, so to speak, the coordinates of a useful map of this field of study, and it is thus that I intend to use them. The central theme of the book is that intentionality, the mind's direction upon its objects, sometimes called the mind's power to represent or be ‘about things, is the essential feature of all mental phenomena. This is Brentano's thesis, named in honour of Franz Brentano, the German philosopher and founder of the phenomenological movement. Although I take the name and the inspiration for the thesis from Brentano, the book is not in any sense a book about Brentano or the movement he founded, nor does it defend the thesis in the sense in which he meant it. I explain what I mean by intentionality in Chapter 1, and I give accounts of the intentionality of consciousness, thought, and perception in Chapters 3, 4, and 5. Chapter 2 takes up a subsidiary theme: the mind-body problem, and the extent to which a physicalist reductive account of mental phenomena is possible, or even necessary. One conclusion of Chapter 2 is that much of what is interesting about the mind is left open when the question of physicalism is settled. At its simplest, the point can be put like this: suppose physicalism is true, and mental properties are identical to physical properties. We still need to know which physical properties these are, what are the general characteristics of these properties, how we know about them, and so on. Alternatively, suppose the sort of 'emergentism' I favour is true: mental properties are causally efficacious 'emergent properties of human beings and other creatures. We still need to know which emergent properties these are, what are the general characteristics of these properties, and how we know about them.