Mind & Body

Does metacognition, i.e. the capacity to form epistemic self-evaluations about one's current cognitive performance, derive from a mindreading capacity, or does it rely, at least in part, on sui generis informational processes? In The Philosophy of...

Colin McGinn presents his latest work on consciousness in ten interlinked essays, four of them previously unpublished. He extends and deepens his controversial solution to the mind-body problem, defending the view that consciousness is both ontologically...

Philosophy (especially philosophy of language and philosophy of mind), science (especially linguistics and cognitive science), and common sense all sometimes make reference to propositions--understood as the things we believe and say, and the things...

To be a 'commonsense realist' is to hold that perceptual experience is (in general) an immediate awareness of mind-independent objects, and a source of direct knowledge of what such objects are like. Over the past few centuries this view has faced...

The topic of introspection stands at the interface between questions in epistemology about the nature of self-knowledge and questions in the philosophy of mind about the nature of consciousness. What is the nature of introspection such that it provides...

Lucy O'Brien argues that a satisfactory account of first-person reference and self-knowledge needs to concentrate on our nature as agents. She considers two main questions. First, what account of first-person reference can we give that respects the...

Wylie Breckenridge offers a fresh understanding of the character of visual experience by deploying the methods of semantics. He develops a theory of what we mean by the 'look' sentences that we use to describe the character of our visual experiences, and...

Certain representations are bound in a special way to our sensory capacities. Many pictures show things as looking certain ways, for instance, while auditory mental images show things as sounding certain ways. What do all those distinctively sensory...

We all seem to be capable of telling what our current states of mind are. At any given moment, we know, for example, what we believe, and what we want. But how do we know that? In Transparent Minds, Jordi Fernandez explains our knowledge of our own...

The Objects of Thought addresses the ancient question of how it is possible to think about what does not exist. Tim Crane argues that the representation of the non-existent is a pervasive feature of our thought about the world, and that we will not...

In this book David Hodgson presents a clear and compelling case against today's orthodox mechanistic view of the brain and mind, and in favour of the view that `the mind matters'. Although written from a philosophical viewpoint, the book has important...

Christopher Peacocke presents a philosophical theory of subjects of consciousness, together with a theory of the nature of first person representation of such a subject of consciousness. He develops a new treatment of subjects, distinct from previous...

This book proposes a new, unified view of the mind which integrates the insights of philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists. Through a detailed discussion of major theories from all these, and related disciplines, the author gradually reveals...

When we represent the world in language, in thought, or in perception, we often represent it from a perspective. We say and think that the meeting is happening now, that it is hot here, that I am in danger and not you; that the tree looks larger from my...

Physicalism has in recent years become almost an orthodoxy, especially in the philosophy of mind. Many philosophers, however, feel uneasy about this development, and this volume is intended as a collective response to it. Together these papers, written...

Autonomy is a fundamental though contested concept. For instance, most of us place great value on the opportunity to make our own decisions and to be able to lead a life of our own choosing. Yet there is stark disagreement on what is involved in being...

RD Laing remains one of the most famous psychiatrists of the last 50 years. In the 1960s he enjoyed enormous popularity and received much publicity for his controversial views challenging the psychiatric orthodoxy. He championed the rights of the...

The World in the Head collects the best of Robert Cummins' papers on mental representation and psychological explanation. Running through these papers are a pair of themes: that explaining the mind requires functional analysis, not subsumption under...

David Papineau presents a controversial view of human reason, portraying it as a normal part of the natural world, and drawing on the empirical sciences to illuminate its workings. In these six interconnected essays he offers a fresh approach to some...

Hume? Yes, David Hume, that's who Jerry Fodor looks to for help in advancing our understanding of the mind. Fodor claims his Treatise of Human Nature as the foundational document of cognitive science: it launched the project of constructing an empirical...

Marcia Cavell draws on philosophy, psychoanalysis, and the sciences of the mind in a fascinating and original investigation of human subjectivity. A 'subject' is a creature, we may say, who recognizes herself as an 'I', taking in the world from her own...

Sounds and Perception is a collection of original essays on auditory perception and the nature of sounds - an emerging area of interest in the philosophy of mind and perception, and in the metaphysics of sensible qualities. The individual essays discuss...

Certain representations are bound in a special way to our sensory capacities. Many pictures show things as looking certain ways, for instance, while auditory mental images show things as sounding certain ways. What do all those distinctively sensory...

Joseph Levine draws together a series of essays in which he has developed his distinctive approach to philosophy of mind. He explores such topics as the "phenomenal concept strategy" to defend materialism from anti-materialist intuitions, the doctrine of...

Causal powers are ubiquitous. Electrons are negatively charged; they have the power to repel other electrons. Water is a solvent; it has the power to dissolve salt. We use concepts of causal powers and their relatives-dispositions, capacities, abilities,...

Joshua Gert presents an original account of color properties, and of our perception of them. He employs a general philosophical strategy - neo-pragmatism - which challenges an assumption made by virtually all other theories of color. Neo-pragmatism...

Articulating a thought can be astoundingly easy. We generally have no trouble expressing complex ideas that we have never considered before, though not always. Articulating a thought can also be extremely hard. Our difficulties in articulating thoughts...

Beyond Vision brings together eight essays by Casey O'Callaghan. The works draw theoretical and philosophical lessons about perception, the nature of its objects, and sensory awareness through sustained attention to extra-visual and multisensory forms of...

John MacFarlane debates how we might make sense of the idea that truth is relative, and how we might use this idea to give satisfying accounts of parts of our thought and talk that have resisted traditional methods of analysis. Although there is a...

Most research on perception has focused on the perceptual experience of three-dimensional, solid, bounded, and coherent material objects - items like tables and tomatoes. But as well as having perceptual experience of such objects, we also experience...

The starting point for this book is a particular answer to a question that grips many of us: what kind of thing are we? The particular answer is that we are animals (of a certain sort)--a view nowadays called 'animalism'. This answer will appear obvious...

Sensory experience seems to be the basis of our knowledge and conception of mind-independent things. The puzzle is to understand how that can be: even if the things we experience (apples, tables, trees etc), are mind-independent how does our sensory...

What is it for you to be conscious? There is no agreement whatever in philosophy or science: it has remained a hard problem, a mystery. Is this partly or mainly owed to the existing theories not even having the same subject, not answering the same...

Virtual Subjects, Fugitive Selves is a sustained analytical exploration of the rich philosophy of self of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935). Pessoa has become many things to many people in the years that have passed since his untimely...

Consciousness is a perennial source of mystification in the philosophy of mind: how could processes in the brain amount to conscious experiences? Robert Kirk uses the notion of 'raw feeling' to bridge the intelligibility gap between our knowledge of...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9798822969773Author Scott BeringerFormat HardbackPage Count 192Imprint Palmetto PublishingPublisher Palmetto PublishingWeight(grams) 426gDimensions(mm) 229mm...

Apologies but we at Booksplease don't have a full description for this book.Book InformationISBN 9798822969780Author Scott BeringerFormat PaperbackPage Count 192Imprint Palmetto PublishingPublisher Palmetto PublishingWeight(grams) 263gDimensions(mm)...

The dream of a happy life has preoccupied thinkers since Plato, and in modern times it has become one of the signature tunes of our age - the rise of therapists, gurus, New Age cults and the use of Prozac are familiar indicators of how ubiquitous the...

Massimo Marraffa and Cristina Meini re-connect the psychology of identity with its philosophical roots in this study. They trace the contemporary problem of the self to John Locke and William James' foundational theories on personal identity. By...

The past decade has witnessed an exciting (and controversial) new approach to philosophy: Experimental philosophers aim to supplement, and perhaps to supplant, traditional philosophical approaches by employing empirical methods from the social sciences...