- Descartes's Concept of Mind
- Lilli Alanen
- This is the first book to give an analysis of Descartes's pivotal concept that deals with all the functions of the mind, cognitive as well as volitional, theoretical as well as practical and moral. By drawing out the historical antecedents and the intellectual evolution of Descartes's thinking about the mind, the book shows how his emphasis on the embodiment of the mind has implications far more complex and interesting than the usual dualist account suggests.
- Hardcover 2003
- The Engaged Intellect
- John McDowell
- This book collects important essays of John McDowell. Each involves a sustained engagement with the views of an important philosopher and is characterized by a modesty that is partly temperamental and partly methodological.
- Hardcover 2009
- Expression and the Inner
- David H. Finkelstein
- At least since Descartes, philosophers have been interested in the special knowledge or authority that we exhibit when we speak about our own thoughts, attitudes, and feelings. This book contends that even the best work in contemporary philosophy of mind fails to account for this sort of knowledge or authority because it does not pay the right sort of attention to the notion of expression. What's at stake is not only how to understand self-knowledge and first-person authority, but also what it is that distinguishes conscious from unconscious psychological states, what the mental life of a nonlinguistic animal has in common with our sort of mental life, and how to think about Wittgenstein's legacy to the philosophy of mind.
- Hardcover 2003 / Paperback 2008
- Having Thought
- John Haugeland
- The unifying theme of these thirteen essays is understanding. In the first group of essays John Haugeland addresses mind and intelligence. Intelligibility comes to the fore in a set of "metaphysical" pieces on analog and digital systems and supervenience. In the third set of papers Haugeland elaborates and then undermines a battery of common presuppositions about the foundational notions of intentionality and representation. Finally, the fourth and most recent group of essays confronts the essential character of understanding in relation to what is understood.
- Hardcover 1998 / Paperback 2000
- Having the World in View
- John McDowell
- McDowell builds on his much discussed Mind and World. He argues that the roots of some problems plaguing contemporary philosophy can be found in issues that were first discerned by Kant, and that the best way to get a handle on them is to follow those issues as they are reshaped in the writings of Hegel and Sellars. This new book will be a decisive further step toward healing the divisions in contemporary philosophy.
- Hardcover 2009
- Invariances
- Robert Nozick
- Recent scientific advances have placed many traditional philosophical concepts under great stress. In this pathbreaking book, the eminent philosopher Robert Nozick rethinks and transforms the concepts of truth, objectivity, necessity, contingency, consciousness, and ethics. Using an original method, he presents bold new philosophical theories that take account of scientific advances in physics, evolutionary biology, economics, and cognitive neuroscience, and casts current cultural controversies (such as whether all truth is relative and whether ethics is objective) in a wholly new light.
- Hardcover 2001 / Paperback 2003
- Meaning, Knowledge, and Reality
- John McDowell
- This is the second volume of John McDowell's selected papers. These nineteen essays collectively report on McDowell's involvement, over more than twenty years, with questions about the interface between the philosophies of language and mind and with issues in general epistemology. Throughout McDowell focuses on questions to do with content.
- Hardcover 1998 / Paperback 2001
- Mind and World
- John McDowell
- Modern philosophy finds it difficult to give a satisfactory picture of the place of minds in the world. In Mind and World, one of the most distinguished philosophers writing today offers his diagnosis of this difficulty and points to a cure.
- Paperback 1996 / Hardcover
- Mind in Life
- Evan Thompson
- How is life related to the mind? Thompson explores this so-called explanatory gap between biological life and consciousness, drawing on sources as diverse as molecular biology, evolutionary theory, artificial life, complex systems theory, neuroscience, psychology, Continental Phenomenology, and analytic philosophy. Ultimately he shows that mind and life are more continuous than previously accepted, and that current explanations do not adequately address the myriad facets of the biology and phenomenology of mind.
- Hardcover 2007
- Mind, Value, and Reality
- John McDowell
- This volume collects some of John McDowell's most influential papers of the last two decades. These essays deal with several themes including the interpretation of Aristotle and Plato's ethical writings, questions in moral philosophy that arise from reflection on the Greek tradition, Wittengensteinian ideas about reason in action, and issues central to the philosophy of mind.
- Hardcover 1998 / Paperback 2001
- Mindsight
- Colin McGinn
- The guiding thread of this book is the distinction McGinn draws between perception and imagination. McGinn shows what the differences are, arguing that imagination is a sui generis mental faculty. He goes on to discuss the nature of dreaming and madness and investigates the role of imagination in logical reasoning, belief formation, and the comprehension of meaning. His overall claim is that imagination pervades our mental life, obeys its own distinctive principles, and merits much more attention.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2006
- The Physiology of Truth
- Jean-Pierre Changeux
- Translated by M. B. DeBevoise
- In this wide-ranging book, one of the boldest thinkers in modern neuroscience confronts an ancient philosophical problem: can we know the world as it really is? Drawing on provocative new findings about the psychophysiology of perception and judgment in both human and nonhuman primates, and also on the cultural history of science, Jean-Pierre Changeux makes a powerful case for the reality of scientific progress and argues that it forms the basis for a coherent and universal theory of human rights.
- Hardcover 2004 / Paperback 2009
- Rails to Infinity
- Crispin Wright
- Hardcover 2001
- Seeing Red
- Nicholas Humphrey
- Beginning with the seemingly simple act of seeing red, this brilliantly unsettling essay builds toward an explanation of why consciousness makes compelling evolutionary sense. From sensations that probably began in bodily expression to the evolutionary advantages of a conscious self, Seeing Red tracks the "hard problem" of consciousness to its source and its solution, a solution in which the very hardness of the problem may make all the difference.
- Hardcover 2006 / Paperback 2009
- Self-Knowledge and Resentment
- Akeel Bilgrami
- In Self-Knowledge and Resentment, Akeel Bilgrami argues that self-knowledge of our intentional states is special among all the knowledges we have because it is not an epistemological notion in the standard sense of that term, but instead is a fallout of the radically normative nature of thought and agency.
- Hardcover 2006
- Simple Mindedness
- Jennifer Hornsby
- Jennifer Hornsby offers here detailed discussions of ontology, human agency, and everyday psychological explanation. In her distinctive view of questions about "the mind's place in nature" she argues for a particular position in philosophy of mind: naive naturalism.
- Hardcover 1997 / Paperback 2001