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Philosophy of Mind Contents w 页码,1/177(W) Philosophy of Mind Jaegwon Kim BROWN UNIVERSITY Westview Press A Subsidiary of Perseus Books, L.L.C. -v- Dimensions of Philosophy Series All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Copyright © 1998 by Westview Press, Inc., A subsidiary of Perseus Books, L.L.C. Published in 1996 in the United States of America by Westview Press, Inc., 5500 Central Avenue, Boulder, Colorado 80301-2877, and in the United Kingdom by Westview Press, 12 Hid's Copse Road, Cumnor Hill, Oxford OX2 9JJ A CIP catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress. ISBN 0-8133-0775-9; ISBN 0-8133-0776-7 (pbk.) The paper used in this publication meets the requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials Z39.48-1984. 10 9 8 -vi- Contents Preface xi 1 INTRODUCTION 1 Minds as Souls: Mental Substances , 2 Mental Properties, Events, and Processes , 5 Philosophy of Mind , 7 Supervenience, Dependence, and Minimal Physicalism , 9 Varieties of Mental Phenomena , 13 Is There a "Mark of the Mental"? 15 Further Readings , 23 Notes , 24 2 MIND AS BEHAVIOR: BEHAVIORISM 25 Reactions Against the Cartesian Conception , 26 What Is Behavior? 28 Logical Behaviorism: Hempel's Argument , 29 A Behavioral Translation of "Paul Has a Toothache," 31 Difficulties with Behavioral Translation , 32 What Kinds of Behavior Are Entailed by Mental States? 35 Do Pains Entail Pain Behavior? 36 Ontological Behaviorism , 38 The True Relationship Between Pain and Pain Behavior? 39 file://C:\Users\Waguter\Desktop\kim\htm.htm 2010/7/11 w 页码,2/177(W) Methodological Behaviorism , 41 Further Readings , 45 Notes , 45 3 MIND AS THE BRAIN: THE MIND-BRAIN IDENTY THEORY 47 Mind-Brain Correlations , 47 Explaining Mind-Body Correlations: Mind-Body Theories , 49 -vii- Arguments for Psychoneural Identification , 53 Armstrong's Argument , 54 An Argument from Mental Causation , 55 What Does "Identity" Mean? 56 Token Physicalism and Type Physicalism , 58 Objections to the Identity Theory , 62 Further Readings , 70 Notes , 71 4 MIND AS A COMPUTER: MACHINE FUNCTIONALISM 73 Multiple Realizability and the Functional Conception of the Mental , 74 Functionalism and Behaviorism , 77 Turing Machines , 80 "Physical Realizations" of Turing Machines , 85 Machine Functionalism: Its Motivation and Main Claims , 87 Machine Functionalism: Further Considerations , 92 The Turing Test , 96 The "Chinese Room" Argument , 99 Further Readings , 101 Notes , 102 5 MIND AS A CAUSAL STRUCTURE: CAUSALTHEORETICAL FUNCTIONALISM 104 The Ramsey-Lewis Method , 105 The Choice of an Underlying Psychological Theory , 107 Functionalism as Physicalism , 111 Objections and Difficulties , 113 Concepts and Properties; The Functionalist Conception of Psychology , 120 Further Readings , 122 Notes , 123 6 MENTAL CAUSATION 125 Agency and Mental Causation , 126 Mental Causation, Mental Realism, Epiphenomenalism , 128 Cartesian Interactionism , 130 Psychophysical Laws and "Anomalous Monism," 132 Property Epiphenomenalism and the Causal Efficacy of Mental Properties , 138 Can Counterfactuals Help? 139 The Extrinsicness of Mental States , 144 -viii- The Causal Closure of the Physical Domain , 147 Mind-Body Supervenience and Causal/Explanatory Exclusion , 148 Further Readings , 152 Notes , 153 7 CONSCIOUSNESS 155 Aspects of Consciousness , 156 Consciousness as Inner Awareness , 164 Does Consciousness Supervene on Physical Properties? 168 The Problem of Qualia , 172 Can Qualia Be Explained Physically? 175 file://C:\Users\Waguter\Desktop\kim\htm.htm 2010/7/11 w 页码,3/177(W) Who Needs Qualia? 177 Further Readings , 180 Notes , 181 8 MENTAL CONTENT 184 Interpretation Theory , 185 The Causal/Correlational Approach , 191 Narrow Content and Wide Content , 193 The Metaphysics of Wide-Content States , 199 Narrow Content? 202 Two Problems with Wide Content , 205 Further Readings , 208 Notes , 209 9 REDUCTIVE AND NONREDUCTIVE PHYSICALISM 211 What Is Reduction? 212 Arguments Against Mind-Body Reduction , 216 Supervenience Physicalism , 221 Emergentism , 226 The Problem of "Downward Causation," 229 Local Reductions and the Status of Mental Properties , 233 Qualia and Reductionism: A Dilemma , 236 Further Readings , 237 Notes , 239 Bibliography 241 About the Book and Author 249 Index 251 -ix- [This page intentionally left blank.] -x- Preface This book is an introductory survey of philosophy of mind, with brief incursions into the overlapping and adjoining field of philosophy of psychology. It covers many of the central issues currently debated in the field in a way that is intended to be accessible to those without a formal background in philosophy. But the distance between what one hopes and what one actually has to settle for can be great, and I will have to leave it to the reader to judge to what extent I have been successful. In the course of writing this book, I was constantly reminded of what Sir Peter Strawson once said, namely, that there is no such thing as "elementary philosophy." It has remained my intention-- and hope--though, to present the issues, claims, and arguments concerning the mind in a way that will make them intelligible, interesting, and challenging to beginning students of philosophy as well as those who are first coming to the philosophy of mind with some general philosophical background. I hope, too, that those with some familiarity with the field will also find something of interest here. A book like this must deal with a number of diverse topics that are closely connected and yet relatively independent of one another. This has affected the structure of the book in two ways: First, it seemed to me desirable to make each chapter as self-sufficient as possible so that it could be read as an independent essay on the issues under discussion. To accomplish this, I thought it important to preserve, within each chapter, as much narrative continuity and flow of argument as possible. Second, in the course of pursuing this goal, I have found it desirable, and sometimes even necessary, to tolerate some overlap and repetition of material from chapter to chapter; for example, issues concerning mental causation, mind-body supervenience, content, qualia, and reduction are discussed in various places, and similar or closely related points and arguments make more than one appearance throughout the book. file://C:\Users\Waguter\Desktop\kim\htm.htm 2010/7/11 w 页码,4/177(W) Over the past two decades or so, philosophy of mind has been an unusually active and exciting area. The field has grown enormously, and -xi- believe there have been significant advances in our understanding of the issues concerning the mind. A large body of literature has built up during this period, and the rate of research publication shows no signs of abating. In part this boom has been due to the impetus provided by the explosive growth, since around midcentury, of "cognitive science"--a loosely allied group of disciplines, including psychology, linguistics, neuroscience, and artificial intelligence, with aspirations to enhance the scientific understanding of mentality. This has, to some extent (some will say fundamentally), changed the character of philosophy of mind, and there are areas where philosophical work on the nature of mind is continuous with scientific work. These include such topics as mental representation, mental imagery, rationality and decisionmaking language and language acquisition, the nature of "folk psychology" and its relationship to systematic psychology, and the controversy concerning classical artificial intelligence and connectionism. A separate volume devoted to philosophy of psychology and cognitive science is needed to provide proper coverage of these topics (such a volume, I understand, is forthcoming in the Dimensions of Philosophy series). In this book I have tried to stay with the issues that are standardly and traditionally regarded as falling squarely within philosophy of mind rather than those that emerge primarily from the recent developments in the sciences. I am indebted to Marian David and Fred Feldman, who have given me helpful comments on earlier versions of various chapters. Lynne Rudder Baker and John Heil, who read the manuscript for Westview, provided me with many useful comments and suggestions that have improved the book. Maura Geisser, my research assistant at Brown, has given me invaluable help with many tedious chores. Spencer Carr, my editor, has treated me with great patience and tact in the face of repeated delays. It goes without saying that I owe intellectual debts to a great many philosophers, too numerous for individual acknowledgments. But it should be apparent from the text and references who many of them are. My thanks go to them all. Jaegwon Kim -xii- 1 Introduction In coping with the myriad things that come our way at every moment of our waking life, we try to organize them into manageable structures. We do this by sorting them into groups-- categorizing them as "rocks," "trees," "insects," "birds," "cows," "telephone poles," "mountains," and countless other kinds, and describing them in terms of their properties and features, as "large" or "small," "tall" or "short," "red" or "yellow," "slow" or "swift," and so on. A distinction that we almost instinctively, though usually unconsciously, apply to just about everything that we come across is whether or not it is a living thing (it might be a dead bird, but still we know it is the kind of thing that lives, unlike a rock or a pewter vase, which couldn't be "dead"). There are exceptions, of course, but it is unusual for us to know what something is without at the same time knowing, or having some ideas about, whether or not it is a living creature. Another example: when we know a person, we almost always know whether the person is male or female.
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