Table Of ContentNew Waves in Philosophy
Series Editors: Vincent F. Hendricks and Duncan Pritchard
Titles include :
Jesús H. Aguilar, Andrei A. Buckareff and Keith Frankish ( editors)
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION
Michael Brady (e ditor )
NEW WAVES IN META-ETHICS
Thom Brooks (editor)
NEW WAVES IN ETHICS
Thom Brooks (editor)
NEW WAVES IN GLOBAL JUSTICE
Otavio Bueno and Oystein Linnebo (editors)
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS
Boudewijn De Bruin and Christopher F. Zurn ( editors )
NEW WAVES IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Maksymilian Del Mar (e ditor )
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW
Allan Hazlett (editor)
NEW WAVES IN METAPHYSICS
Vincent F. Hendricks and Duncan Pritchard (e ditors )
NEW WAVES IN EPISTEMOLOGY
P.D. Magnus and Jacob Busch (editors)
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Yujin Nagasawa and Erik J. Wielenberg (e ditors )
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen, Evan Selinger and Søren Riis ( editors )
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY
Greg Restall and Gillian Russell (e ditors )
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHICAL LOGIC
Jesper Ryberg, Thomas S. Petersen and Clark Wolf ( editors )
NEW WAVES IN APPLIED ETHICS
Sarah Sawyer (editor)
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
Mark Sprevak and Jesper Kallestrup ( editors )
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
Kathleen Stock and Katherine Thomson-Jones ( editors )
NEW WAVES IN AESTHETICS
Cory D. Wright and Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen (editors)
NEW WAVES IN TRUTH
New Waves in Philosophy
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New Waves in Philosophy
of Mind
Edited by
Mark Sprevak
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language, University of Edinburgh, UK
and
Jesper Kallestrup
School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language, University of Edinburgh, UK
Selection and editorial matter © Mark Sprevak and Jesper Kallestrup 2014
Chapters © Individual authors 2014
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2014 978-1-137-28671-0
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in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published 2014 by
PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
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registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke,
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the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries
ISBN 978-1-137-28672-7 ISBN 978-1-137-28673-4 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9781137286734
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Contents
Series Editors’ Preface vii
Preface viii
Notes on Contributors x
Part I Metaphysics of Mind
1 The Cartesian Argument against Physicalism 3
Philip Goff
2 A Call for Modesty: A Priori Philosophy and
the Mind-Body Problem 21
Eric Funkhouser
3 Verbs and Minds 38
Carrie Figdor
4 Meanings and Methodologies 54
Justin C. Fisher
5 Entangled Externalisms 77
Mark Sprevak and Jesper Kallestrup
6 The Phenomenal Basis of Epistemic Justification 98
Declan Smithies
7 The Metaphysics of Mind and the
Multiple Sources of Multiple Realizability 125
Gualtiero Piccinini and Corey J. Maley
8 The Real Trouble with Armchair Arguments
against Phenomenal Externalism 153
Adam Pautz
Part II Mind and Cognitive Science
9 Problems and Possibilities for Empirically Informed
Philosophy of Mind 185
Elizabeth Irvine
v
vi Contents
10 P sychological Explanation, Ontological Commitment
and the Semantic View of Theories 2 08
C olin Klein
11 N aturalizing Action Theory 2 26
B ence Nanay
12 T he Architecture of Higher Thought 2 42
D aniel A. Weiskopf
13 S ignificance Testing in Neuroimagery 2 62
E douard Machery
14 L ack of Imagination: Individual Differences in
Mental Imagery and the Significance of Consciousness 278
I an Phillips
15 A Beginner’s Guide to Group Minds 3 01
G eorg Theiner
Index 3 23
Series Editors’ Preface
The aim of the N ew Waves in Philosophy series was to gather the young and
up-and-coming scholars in philosophy to give their view of the subject
now and in the years to come and to serve a documentary purpose –
that is, ‘this is what they said then, and this is what happened’. These
volumes provide a snapshot of cutting-edge research that will be of
vital interest to researchers and students working in all subject areas of
philosophy. Our goal was to have a N ew Waves volume in every one of
the main areas of philosophy, and with this volume on the philosophy
of mind, we believe that this goal has been achieved. Accordingly, this
volume is the final book in this series. The principles that underlie the
New Waves in Philosophy series will live on, however, in the new Palgrave
Innovations in Philosophy series.
Vincent F. Hendricks and Duncan Pritchard
vii
Preface
Philosophy of mind has always been one of the core disciplines in
philosophy, and it continues to play a dominant role in contemporary
philosophy. The topics broached by philosophers working in this field are
profound, vexed and intriguing. The posed problems pertain, amongst
other things, to the nature and kinds of consciousness we enjoy, to the
differences, if any, between our phenomenal and intentional states and
to the causal and putatively reductive relationships between our mental
states and the physical states of our body and the environment. Some
of these problems are old – or are new versions of old ones – and can
be traced to our great philosophical ancestors; others are entirely novel,
prompted by landmark empirical findings in the cognitive sciences. The
methods philosophers avail themselves of in attempting to provide illu-
minating responses to these problems range from armchair conceptual
analysis to brain-scanning techniques. Very few theories of mind are
widely considered refuted – Malebranche’s occasionalism and Ryle’s
analytic behaviourism are candidates – and most current debates of such
theories exhibit the same vigour and rigour as those that the theories’
introduction generated, not least because of how they mesh with issues
in cognitive science, philosophy of science, metaphysics and philos-
ophy of language, to name but a few. Surely this indicates that which
contenders are correct and to what extent they are so are still very much
open questions.
This volume gives promising younger researchers in the philosophy
of mind a chance to stir up new ideas. They have been asked to think
afresh, to consider what a new wave might look like. The contributors
offer what they take to be the right philosophical account of the topic
in question, examining along the way where the philosophy of mind
and cognition is and where they think it ought to be going. A recurrent
feature is the way insights and results in neuroscience, artificial intelli-
gence, cognitive psychology and cognate areas influence philosophical
theorizing about cognition and the mind.
The volume consists of two parts. Part I is devoted to topics in the
metaphysics of mind. Common to most of the contributions is the ques-
tion of what bearing armchair methods such as thought experiments
and a priori conceptual analysis have on the nature of meaning, mental
viii
Preface ix
content, phenomenal character or the physical realizability of the
mental. Part II is more directly concerned with topics and problems at the
intersection of philosophy of mind and cognitive science. The contribu-
tions share an interest in the question of what light empirical findings
and methodologies in cognitive science shed on explanatory practices
and ontological commitments in more traditional parts of philosophy
of mind. What emerges from the chapters is that the volume’s bipartite
division is not a sharp one; an important recent trend blurs traditional
metaphysical concerns and empirical work.
Prior to the publication of this volume, we organized an online
conference under the auspices of Eidyn: The Edinburgh Centre for
Epistemology, Mind and Normativity. During the three weeks of the
New Waves in Philosophy of Mind Online Conference, more than
500 participants registered, hundreds of posts were made in the online
forums, and the conference papers were downloaded more than 3,000
times. In this, its final form, the volume reflects the input that authors
received from the wide-ranging international scholarly community that
the conference drew upon. We thank everyone for making it a hugely
successful event. We are also very grateful to Brendan George, Melanie
Blair and the rest of the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan for their
support and encouragement throughout. Finally, we thank Jamie Collin
for his excellent work on the index.
