The Science of the Mind

Owen Flanagan

second edition, revised and expanded

A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England Contents

Acknowledgments ix Preface to the Second Edition xi Introduction xiii Chapter 1 Minds and Bodies: Rene Descartes and the Possibility of a Science of the Mind 1 Descartes' Philosophy of the Body: The Reflex Hypothesis. Descartes' Philosophy of Mind: Three Arguments for Dualism. Conclusion. Suggested Readings. Chapter 2 Naturalizing the Mind: The Philosophical Psychology of William James 23 William James: Mentality and Introspection. Toward a Theory of Conscious Mental Life. Mind and Brain: How Is Conscious Mental Life Realized? Naturalism and Free Will. Conclusion. Suggested Readings. Chapter 3 Science and the Secret Self: The Case of Sigmund Freud 55 Freud on the Mind-Body Problem and Psychological Explanation. Psychoanalysis and Self-Knowledge. Is Psychoanalysis Scientific? Conclusion. Suggested Readings. Chapter 4 The Science of Behavior, Antimentalism, and the Good Life: The Philosophical Psychology of B. F. Skinner 83 Skinner's Critique of Two Kinds of Mentalism. The Theoretician's Dilemma. Skinner on Self-Knowledge. The Concept of the "Operant": Selection by Consequences. Psychology and the Good Life. Conclusion. Suggested Readings. Chapter 5 The Case for Cognitive-Developmental Psychology: Piaget and Kohlberg 119 viii Contents Cognitive Development, Empiricism, and Nativism. Stages and Structures. Assimilation, Accommodation, and Autoregulation. The Constructivist's Fallacy. Piaget's Adequacy Thesis. Conclusion. Lawrence Kohlberg: Duties, Dilemmas, and Moral Stages. Kohlberg's Adequacy Thesis. Conclusion. Suggested Readings by and about Piaget. Suggested Readings by and about Kohlberg. Chapter 6 Cognitive Science and Artificial Intelligence: Philosophical Assumptions and Implications 175 Cognitive Science: The Basic Program. Kant, Cognitive Science, and the Anticipation of Experience. Transcendental Reasoning: Tiuo Experiments. Cognitive Science and Self-Knowledge. Cognitive Science and the Unity of Mind. Cognitive Science and Rationality. Cognitive Science and the Mind-Brain Problem. Cognitive Science and the Charms of Good Old- Fashioned Artificial Intelligence. Parallel Distributed Processing, Connectionism, and Biological Realism. Four Kinds of Artificial Intelligence. Ten Objections to Artificial Intelligence. Conclusion. Suggested Readings. Chapter 7 Minds, Genes, and Morals: The Case of E. O. Wilson's Sociobiology 265 The Conceptual Foundations of Sociobiology. Closing the Genotype- Phenotype Gap: The Opening Gambit. Closing the Genotype-Phenotype Gap: The New Argument. Sociobiology and Morality. Conclusion. Suggested Readings. Chapter 8 Consciousness 307 Cognitivism and Consciousness. Conscious Shyness and the "New Mysterians." Mind, Brain, and Experience. The Evolution of Darwin Machines. Neural Darwinism. Self and Nonself. Sensory Qualia and Neural Vectors. Experiential Sensitivity versus Informational Sensitivity. Identity Theory to a First Approximation? The Nezu Mysterians' Response. A Critique of the New Mysterians' Argument. Conscious Inessentialism, Absent Qualia, and the Epiphenomenalist Suspicion. Teleological Functionalism. The Self as the Center of Narrative Gravity. A Unified Theory of Consciousness? Conclusion. Suggested Readings. Notes 367 Bibliography 399 Name Index 411 Subject Index 417