"This is a marvelous book, full of subtle, thoughtful, and original argument.

The central mission of cognitive science is to reveal the real nature of the mind, however familiar or foreign that nature may be to naive preconceptions. The existence of naive conceptions is also important, however. Prescientific thought and language contain concepts of the mental, and these concepts deserve attention from cognitive science. Just as scientific psychology studies folk physics (McCloskey 1983, Hayes 1985), viz., the common understanding (or misunderstanding) of physical phenomena, so it must study folk psychology, the common understanding (...) of mental states. This subfield of scientific psychology is what I mean by the phrase 'the psychology of folk psychology'. (shrink)

This paper examines some of the central arguments of John McDowell's Mind and World, particularly his treatment of the Kantian themes of the spontaneity of thought and of the nature of self-consciousness. It is argued that in so far as McDowell departs from Kant, his position becomes less plausible in three respects. First, the space of reason is identified with the space of responsible and critical freedom in a way that runs together issues about synthesis below the level of concepts (...) and at the level of complete judgements. This leads to the unwarranted exclusion of animal minds from the space of reasons. Second, McDowell draws no essential distinction between apperception and inner sense, a distinction which is important to a defensible Kantian view and to the very idea of a sui generis transcendental knowledge of the mind that is consistent with Kant's critical principles. McDowell does not take into account some of Kant's developed arguments about the inherently reflective nature of consciousness which is interpreted as an adverbial theory of the nature of conscious experience, a mode of being in a mental state . Third, McDowell endorses a standard treatment of Kant's approach to the mind in which a merely formal account of mind needs to be anchored outside consciousness on the physical body. The arguments for this conclusion, both in Mind and World and in related work by Bermudez and Hurley, is shown to be very inconclusive as a criticism of Kant. The capacity to self-ascribe thoughts that are already conscious shows, but does not say, a truth about the unity of our conscious experience that does not require further anchoring on a physical body; at that stage of the Critique Kant is describing conditions for conscious experience in general, not the conscious experience of spatio-temporally located makers of judgements. The alleged lacuna in Kant's arguments is no lacuna at all. (shrink)

This paper is a discussion of Michael Thau's interesting critique in Chapter 2 of Consciousness and Cognition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, of the common view that beliefs are internal states.

This book maintains that our conception of consciousness and cognition begins with and depends upon a few fundamental errors. Thau elucidates these errors by discussing three important philosophical puzzles - Spectrum Inversion, Frege's Puzzle, and Black-and-White Mary - each of which concerns some aspect of either consciousness or cognition. He argues that it has gone unnoticed that each of these puzzles presents the very same problem and, in bringing this commonality to light, the errors in our natural conception of consciousness (...) and cognition are also reviewed. (shrink)

The absence of identification of oneself tells against the view that introspection is a form of self-perception.

Thomas Nagel argues that the subjective character of mind inevitably eludes philosophical efforts to incorporate the mental into a single, complete, physically objective view of the world. Nagel sees contemporary philosophy as caught on the horns of a dilemma.

Locke put forward the theory of consciousness as "internal Sense" or "reflection"; Kant made it inner sense, by means of which the mind intuits itself or its inner state." On that theory, consciousness is a perception-like second-order representing of our own psychological states events. The term "consciousness," of course, has many distinct uses.

The Identity Thesis, proposed by Reid for the case of sensations, and extended by Brentano to conscious states generally, says that a state is conscious iff it is identical with introspective knowledge of its own instantiation. The Thesis offers simple explanations of a number of puzzling features of introspective self-knowledge, and unites the problems of introspection, consciousness and knowledge in the single problem of the metaphysical nature of conscious states. It does nothing to solve the latter problem, but it does (...) entail that a functionalist account of consciousness is incomplete without an exact functionalist definition of knowledge itself. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of consciousness in action. Both consciousness and action are related to knowledge. A voluntary action is defined as a volition, or something intentionally effected by means of such volitions. Volitions are conscious mental acts whose proper function is to make their content true. A mental act is the exercise of a power of mind and a conscious mental act is identical with knowledge of its own phenomenal character. This set of definitions elucidates the relations between (...) consciousness, action and knowledge. (shrink)

'superb' -Tom Stoneham, Oxford MagazineA. W. Moore argues in this bold and unusual book that it is possible to think about the world from no point of view. His argument involves discussion of a very wide range of fundamental philosophical issues, including the nature of persons, the subject-matter of mathematics, realism and anti-realism, value, the inexpressible, and God. The result is a powerful critique of our own finitude. 'imaginative, original, and ambitious' Robert Brandom, Times Literary Supplement.

Descartes has often been called the 'father of modern philosophy'. His attempts to find foundations for knowledge, and to reconcile the existence of the soul with the emerging science of his time, are among the most influential and widely studied in the history of philosophy. This is a classic and challenging introduction to Descartes by one of the most distinguished modern philosophers. Bernard Williams not only analyzes Descartes' project of founding knowledge on certainty, but uncovers the philosophical motives for his (...) search. With acute insight, he demonstrates how Descartes' _Meditations _are not merely a description but the very enactment of philosophical thought and discovery. Williams covers all of the key areas of Descartes' thought, including God, the will, the possibility of knowledge, and the mind and its place in nature. He also makes profound contributions to the theory of knowledge, metaphysics and philosophy generally. With a new foreword by John Cottingham. (shrink)

This is a new release of the original 1949 edition.

The central mission of cognitive science is to reveal the real nature of the mind, however familiar or foreign that nature may be to naive preconceptions. The existence of naive conceptions is also important, however. Prescientific thought and language contain concepts of the mental, and these concepts deserve attention from cognitive science. Just as scientific psychology studies folk physics (McCloskey 1983, Hayes 1985), viz., the common understanding (or misunderstanding) of physical phenomena, so it must study folk psychology, the common understanding (...) of mental states. This subfield of scientific psychology is what I mean by the phrase 'the psychology of folk psychology'. (shrink)