Naturally Minded: Mental Causation, Virtual Machines, and Maps (New Directions in Philosophy and Cognitive Science)

This book is an empirically informed investigation of the philosophical problem of mental causation, and a philosophical investigation of the status of cognitive scientific generalisations. If there are mental causes which can be classified in a way useful for predicting and explaining, then they are natural kinds. First. we develop an account of natural kinds that accommodates the cognitive. Second, we show how statements using these are not reducible to statements about physical kinds, involving biological and social facts. Finally, Virtual Machine Functionalism is defended as the correct account of the relationship between cognition and the material world. Contents Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Natural Kinds What Are Natural Kinds? Are Natural Kinds Found or Made? Descriptivism Essentialism Cluster Theories Rigidity Perspectivalism Topographical Views Projection Historical Kinds Mapping Pluto: A Case Study in Natural Kind Term Demarcation Cognitive Kinds References Chapter 3: Physicalist Reductionism Reducing Reduction Constraints The ‘Special’ Debate Stuff Happens Reduction Reconsidered Physicalism Monisms Causal Closure References Chapter 4: Causal Explanations Causation Humean Accounts Capacities Account Where to Draw the Line? Making a Difference Causal Mechanisms Explanation Laws Supervenience and Realisation Identity Varieties of Supervenience Emergence Emergence Criteria Weak and Strong Emergence Context ‘Radical’ Emergence Kim’s Argument Pluralism Emergence of Cognition References Chapter 5: Kinds of Mental Content Mental Kinds First and Third Person Animal Beliefs Architecture Feedback Representations Enactivism Content Narrow and Broad Content Embodied Content References Chapter 6: Embodied Agents Rational Agency Spaces of Reasons Feedback and Feedforward Evolution Plastic People Expectations Consciousness Externalism Physical Bodies in a Social World Extended Minds Embodied Consciousness Against Embodiment References Chapter 7: Physically Embodied Minds Virtual Machines Consciousness The Feeling of Things Ecological Cognition Qualia Panpsychism and Composition The Living Dead The Mind-Mind Problem Feeling Things In Two Minds Selfishness In a Relationship Virtual Machines References Chapter 8: Natural Minds Embodied Virtual Machinery Causation and Causal Closure Natural Kinds Physicalism Emergence Mental Causation References Chapter 9: Conclusion Reference References Index