This book is a tour-de-force on how human consciousness may have evolved. From the "phantom pain" experienced by people who have lost their limbs to the uncanny faculty of "blindsight," Humphrey argues that raw sensations are central to all conscious states and that consciousness must have evolved, just like all other mental faculties, over time from our ancestorsodily responses to pain and pleasure. '.

Through the use of such "folk" concepts as belief, desire, intention, and expectation, Daniel Dennett asserts in this first full scale presentation of...

_Behavioral and Brain Sciences_ , 15, 183-247, 1992. Reprinted in _The Philosopher's Annual_ , Grim, Mar and Williams, eds., vol. XV-1992, 1994, pp. 23-68; Noel Sheehy and Tony Chapman, eds., _Cognitive Science_ , Vol. I, Elgar, 1995, pp.210-274.

In my opinion, the two main topics in the philosophy of mind are content and consciousness. As the title of my first book, _Content and Consciousness_ (1969) suggested, that is the order in which they must be addressed: first, a theory of content or intentionality--a phenomenon more fundamental than consciousness--and then, building on that foundation, a theory of consciousness. Over the years I have found myself recapitulating this basic structure twice, partly in order to respond to various philosophical objections, but (...) more importantly, because my research on foundational issues in cognitive science led me into different aspects of the problems. The articles in the first half of. (shrink)

What I find particularly valuable in the juxtaposition of these three essays on my book is the triangulation made possible by their different versions of much the same story. I present my view as a product of cognitive science, but all three express worries that it may involve some sort of ominous backsliding towards the evils of behaviorism. I agree with Baars and McGovern when they suggest that philosophy has had some baleful influences on psychology during this century. Logical positivism (...) at its best was full of subtle softenings, but behaviorist psychologists bought the tabloid version, and sold it to their students in large quantities. George Miller's account of those dreary days is not an exaggeration, and the effects still linger in some quarters. (Philosophers are often amused--but they should really be disconcerted--to note that the only living, preaching logical positivists today are to be found in psychology departments.). (shrink)

This article is an introduction to current issues in the field via a brief review of the history of the field since ryle's "the concept of mind" in 1949. The contributions of ordinary language philosophy and the first wave of identity theory provide the background for the development of the various brands of functionalism that occupy the center of attention today. Problems with functionalism concerned with mental representation, "qualia" and other presumed features of conscious experience are examined. There is an (...) extensive bibliography. (shrink)

This chapter provides a discourse on the meaning of perception and the product of the perceptual process. Perception, at its basic level, is defined as a response to a stimulus, which—under the traditional view of the perceptual process—undergoes further processing in the “Cartesian Theater” of the brain prior to becoming a conscious thought to be appreciated. The chapter goes on to disprove this view, which seems to point to the existence of pre-conscious and conscious states, by proposing the “Multiple Drafts (...) Model,” which assumes that the raw response to stimuli is broken down to interacting micro-drafts in the brain, and is then processed and recombined in real-time in a way that is unbounded by human logic and that precludes the existence of a “pre-conscious state.” Counterarguments for the conclusions reached by Ramachandran in his experiments on the phenomenon of “filling in” are also laid out. (shrink)