What is the mind? Is consciousness a process in the brain? How do our minds represent the world? Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings is a grand tour of writings on these and other perplexing questions about the nature of the mind. The most comprehensive collection of its kind, the book includes sixty-three selections that range from the classical contributions of Descartes to the leading edge of contemporary debates. Extensive sections cover foundational issues, the nature of consciousness, and the (...) nature of mental content. Three of the selections are published here for the first time, while many other articles have been revised especially for this volume. Each section opens with an introduction by the editor. Philosophy of Mind is suitable for students at all levels and also for general readers. (shrink)

Curiously, though he provides in Making It Explicit (MIE) elaborate accounts of various representational idioms, of anaphora and deixis, and of quantification, Robert Brandom nowhere attempts to lay out how his understanding of content and his view of the role of logical idioms combine in even the simplest cases of what he calls paradigmatic logical vocabulary. That is, Brandom has a philosophical account of content as updating potential - as inferential potential understood in the sense of commitment or entitlement preservation (...) - and says that the point of logical vocabulary is to make available the expressive resources to make explicit such semantic structures as arise from discursive scorekeeping practice. Thus, one would expect an account of the updating or inferential potential of sentences involving logical vocabulary, an account which is such as to assign to those sentences the inferential significance necessary for this expressive job. In short, one would expect a semantics of logical vocabulary - &, ν, ∼ → - in terms of the difference an assertion of a sentence involving it makes to the atomic score of a linguistic agent, and a completeness proof for the logic generated by this semantics. Despite this, no such semantics is given in MIE. It is in the current paper. (shrink)

This essay argues that one structural feature of the law is its working as an expectations machinery that generates and protects legitimate expectations at the same time. The vindication of expectations becomes apparent when we focus on the ex post-dimension of legal norms. In their ex post-dimension, legal norms vindicate legitimate expectations, in their ex ante-dimension, they generate them. This paper identifies three categories of expectations: Mere hopes, legitimate expectations and vindicated (legitimate) expectations. In the practice of legal discourse, this (...) categorisation is of crucial importance and decisive for our legal rights. This will be illustrated with examples concerning contract and property. The essay further shows that the classification of expectations faces an uncertainty problem. Building on Brandom, the essay argues that the rationality of the law’s classification of expectations can be ensured through the practice of legal discourse. Brandom’s theory of mutual recognition as a normative social structure must be supplemented by justice as a virtue (JAV), however. It will be argued that JAV strengthens the mutual recognition of the players of the law in their permanent reconstruction of legal content. JAV must be included in legal discourse to ensure the rationality of the law’s quest for the classification of expectations. (shrink)