New Perspectives on Type Identity
The Mental and the Physical
Published on 8. March 2012
Book
Hardback
304 pages
978-1-107-00014-8 (ISBN)
Description
The type identity theory, according to which types of mental state are identical to types of physical state, fell out of favour for some years but is now being considered with renewed interest. Many philosophers are critically re-examining the arguments which were marshalled against it, finding in the type identity theory both resources to strengthen a comprehensive, physicalistic metaphysics and a useful tool in understanding the relationship between developments in psychology and new results in neuroscience. This volume brings together leading philosophers of mind, whose essays challenge in new ways the standard objections to type identity theory, such as the multiple realizability objection and the modal argument. Other essays show how cognitive science and neuroscience are lending new support to type identity theory and still others provide, extend and improve traditional arguments concerning the theory's explanatory power.
Reviews / Votes
"...provides perspectives on the type-identity thesis that are both philosophically acute and informed by recent findings in the neurosciences. In addition, many of the contributions provide insightful historical accounts of the fortunes of the type-identity thesis -- and indeed, more generally, of physicalistic accounts of the mind. Thus the essays in this anthology are not merely individually interesting, and well worth reading on their own, but the volume as a whole hangs together in a way that is unusually instructive, and would be an excellent and provocative choice for a graduate seminar in the philosophy of mind."--Janet Levin, University of Southern California, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 21 mm
Weight
596 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-107-00014-8 (9781107000148)
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04/2015
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04/2012
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03/2012
Cambridge University Press
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Persons
Simone Gozzano is Professor of Philosophy of Mind at the Universita dell'Aquila. He is the author of four books (in Italian) on topics such as intentionality, animal minds, mental causation and consciousness. He is the co-editor, with Francesco Orilia, of Tropes and the Philosophy of Mind (2008). Christopher S. Hill is a Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. He is the author of three books: Sensations: A Defense of Type Materialism (Cambridge, 1991), Thought and World: An Austere Account of Truth, Reference, and Semantic Correspondence (Cambridge, 2002), and Consciousness (Cambridge, 2009).
Content
Introduction Simone Gozzano and Christopher S. Hill; 1. Acquaintance and the mind-body problem Katalin Balog; 2. Identity, reduction, and conserved mechanisms: perspectives from circadian rhythm research William Bechtel; 3. Property identity and reductive explanation Ansgar Beckermann; 4. A brief history of neuroscience's actual influences on mind-brain reductionism John Bickle; 5. Type-identity conditions for phenomenal properties Simone Gozzano; 6. Locating qualia: do they reside in the brain or in the body and the world? Christopher S. Hill; 7. In defense of the identity theory Mark I Frank Jackson; 8. The very idea of token physicalism Jaegwon Kim; 9. About face: philosophical naturalism, the heuristic identity theory, and recent findings about prosopagnosia Robert McCauley; 10. On justifying neurobiologicalism for consciousness Brian McLaughlin; 11. The causal contribution of mental events Alyssa Ney; 12. Return of the zombies? John Perry; 13. Identity, variability, and multiple realization in the special sciences Lawrence Shapiro and Thomas Polger; Bibliography; Index.