Proposal for Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind

Edited by Brian McLaughlin¹ and Jonathan Cohen²

This volume will cover a representative sample of the central debates in contemporary philosophy of mind. It will include nine pairs of newly commissioned essays advocating opposing viewpoints - one for each of the nine topics listed below. In addition, it will include a substantive introduction that will present the necessary background for the debates and locate the individual topics within the philosophy of mind and in relation to one another.

The essays will each be between 6000 and 8000 words in length, and will be accessible to upper-level undergraduates and graduate students. The volume will thus be suitable as a text for advanced courses in philosophy of mind. Moreover, the essays will represent the state of play in the topic area, and will contain original argumentation by eminent philosophers, so the volume will also be an important text for academics working in the philosophy of mind and related areas.

We have organized our questions under three headings: questions about the ontology of the mental, questions about the nature of mental content, and questions about the nature of consciousness.

For each questions on our list, we have suggested a number of potential authors on each side of the question. (The potential contributors are listed in alphabetical order, rather than in order of preference.) Although some names appear more than once on our list (including appearances as backup authors) no author will make more than one contribution to the volume. Of the editors, Jonathan Cohen will not write on any of the questions, and Brian McLaughlin will write on at most one of the questions, and only in the case that we cannot find another suitable author. Finally, we may have to make small changes to the wordings of some questions in order to recruit certain authors; however, we would try not to alter the basic thrust of the questions.

1  The Ontology of the Mental

(1)

Is non-reductive materialism viable?

• pro: Louise Antony, Tyler Burge, Kirk Ludwig, Georges Rey
• anti: John Bickle, Paul Churchland

(2)

Is there an unresolved problem of mental causation?

• pro: Jaegwon Kim, David Sosa
• anti: Lynn Rudder Baker, Barry Loewer, Robert van Gulick, Stephen Yablo

(3)

Should physicalism require that all of the facts of our world be a priori deducible from the totality of physical facts and the fact that they are the totality of physical facts?

• pro: David Chalmers, Frank Jackson, Jackson-Chalmers
• anti: Ned Block, Brian McLaughlin, Robert Stalnaker, Block-Stalnaker

2  Mental Content

(4)

Is conceptual role partly constitutive of mental content?

• pro: Christopher Hill, Christopher Peacocke
• anti: Louise Antony, Jerry Fodor

(5)

Is there a viable notion of narrow mental content?

• pro: George Bealer, David Chalmers, Frank Jackson, Gabriel Segal, Stephen White
• anti: Tyler Burge, Scott Soames, Robert Stalnaker

(6)

Is the intentional essentially normative?

• pro: Robert Brandom, Tyler Burge, John McDowell
• anti: Jerry Fodor, Joseph Levine, Georges Rey

(7)

Is externalism about mental content compatible with privileged access?

• pro: Anthony Brueckner, Tyler Burge, Brian McLaughlin
• anti: Paul Boghossian, Jessica Brown, Michael McKinsey

3  Consciousness

(8)

Is consciousness ontologically emergent from the physical?

• pro: David Chalmers, John Hawthorne, Martine Nida-Rumelin, Ted Warfield
• anti: Christopher Hill, Brian Loar, Brian McLaughlin, John Perry, Stephen Yablo

(9)

Is the phenomenal character of a mental state explainable in terms of its intentional content?

• pro: Alex Byrne, Fred Dretske, Terry Horgan and John Tienson, William Lycan, Michael Tye
• anti: Ned Block, Joseph Levine, Christopher Peacocke, Stephen White

Footnotes:

¹Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, 26 Nichol Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1411, brianmc@rci.rutgers.edu

²Department of Philosophy, University of California, San Diego, 9500 Gilman Drive, La Jolla, CA 92093-0119, joncohenREMOVETHIS@aardvark.ucsd.edu (omit text in caps, which reduces automated spam)