Philosophical controversy about the mind has flourished in the thin air of our ignorance about the brain. The humble toad, it now seems, may provide our first instance of a creature whose whole brain is within the reach of our scientific understanding. What will happen to the traditional philosophical issues as our theoretical and factual ignorance recedes? Discussion of the issues explored in the target article is, as Ewert says, "often too theoretical, sometimes philosophical and even [as if that weren't (...) bad enough?--DCD] emotion-laden." The research reported by Ewert has interesting philosophical implications, as he probably recognizes, but he wisely leaves the philosophy to the philosophers. Being one, I would like to draw some of the conclusions he eschews. (shrink)

How can materialists begin to do justice to the experiencing subject? Some materialists, whom I call ?structuralists?, believe that the brain sciences offer at least the distant prospect of a materialist psychology with an experiencing subject. Others, and notably those materialists who are functionalists, believe that this faith is misplaced, and offer us instead a functional psychology. I argue, briefly, that functionalism cannot deliver the goods, and go on to elaborate and defend the structuralist claim that consciousness or experience is (...) the formation of content conceived as that laying down of traces commonly assumed to be involved in perception and cognition. (shrink)