No mental phenomenon is more central than consciousness to an adequate understanding of the mind. Nor does any mental phenomenon seem more stubbornly to resist theoretical treatment. Consciousness is so basic to the way we think about the mind that it can be tempting to suppose that no mental states exist that are not conscious states. Indeed, it may even seem mysterious what sort of thing a mental state might be if it is not a conscious state. On this way (...) of looking at things, if any mental states do lack consciousness, they are exceptional cases that call for special explanation or qualification. Perhaps dispositional or cognitive states exist that are not conscious, but nonetheless count as mental states. (shrink)

Pollock describes an exciting theory of rationality and its partial implementation in OSCAR, a computer system whose descendants will literally be persons.

Edited by Richard McKeon, with an introduction by C.D.C. Reeve Preserved by Arabic mathematicians and canonized by Christian scholars, Aristotle’s works have shaped Western thought, science, and religion for nearly two thousand years. Richard McKeon’s The Basic Works of Aristotle—constituted out of the definitive Oxford translation and in print as a Random House hardcover for sixty years—has long been considered the best available one-volume Aristotle. Appearing in paperback at long last, this edition includes selections from the Organon, On the Heavens, (...) The Short Physical Treatises, Rhetoric, among others, and On the Soul, On Generation and Corruption, Physics, Metaphysics, Nicomachean Ethics, Politics, and Poetics in their entirety. (shrink)

Right now, you are undergoing the conscious experience of reading this text, combined with a shifting background of sensory, emotional, and cognitive coloring. The conscious experience of the reading, together with the accompanying background feel of sensation, emotion, and thought, make up how things subjectively seem to you, how things appear, as best you can tell, from your own unique point of view. Consciousness is at once acutely familiar-it makes up the experienced moments of your waking (and perhaps your dreaming) (...) life. But consciousness also raises deep and interesting philosophical questions, questions about how any mere physical subject could produce such a wonder, and questions about how there could be a seemingly private and isolated spot of personal subjectivity in an objective, impersonal world. Perhaps the challenge of developing a satisfying theoretical understanding of consciousness is beyond us-we've reached the limits of what we can comprehend. Or maybe today's shortcomings are only temporary barriers to an illuminating theory of consciousness, one properly embedding it in our scientific worldview. And possibly we already have the resources for a satisfactory theory from the way we think about things in commonsense terms. This reader provides an entry point for considering these and related theoretical questions surrounding consciousness. This introductory section begins with a brief background survey of contemporary debates on consciousness. It then provides a characterization of the notion of consciousness at issue, and considers why consciousness understood this way might be theoretically problematic. It follows with a survey of some of the major theoretical positions on consciousness, and it closes with a synopsis of the sections of the book. (shrink)

The Mind-Body Problem Questions: What is the mind? What is its connection to the body? Most basic division of answers: Dualist and Materialist (or Physicalist) responses.