What Is the Mind?

1. What Is Philosophy?

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2. On the Mind-Body (or Mind-Brain) Problem
   1. Mind-Body Theories (cartoon)
      from: Taylor, Richard (1974), Metaphysics, 2nd edition (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall): 19.

   2. Bechtel, William (1988), Philosophy of Mind: An Overview for Cognitive Science (Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates).
      • LOCKWOOD Book Collection B105.M55 B43 1988

   3. Colburn, Timothy R. (2000), Philosophy and Computer Science (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe):
      • Ch. 3 ("AI and the History of Philosophy"), pp. 19-40.
      • Ch. 4 ("AI and the Rise of Contemporary Science and Philosophy"), pp. 41-50.

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3. On eliminativism:
   1. Rorty, Richard (1965), "Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories", Review of Metaphysics 19(1) (September): 24-54.

   2. MacFarquhar, Larissa (2007), "Two Heads", The New Yorker (12 February): 58-69.
      • An interview with Paul and Patricia Churchland, two contemporary philosopher-cognitive scientists who believe in eliminativism.
      • Article may still be online, but you need to register (free) at the website.

   3. Legare, Cristine H.; & Gelman, Susan A. (2008), "Bewitchment, Biology, or Both: The Co-Existence of Natural and Supernatural Explanatory Frameworks across Development", Cognitive Science 32(4): 607-642.
      • Provides psychological and anthropological evidence that Rorty's arguments are empirically false.

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4. On functionalistic theories of mind:

   1. Hilary Putnam's invention and subsequent refutation of functionalism:
      • Putnam, Hilary (1960), "Minds and Machines" [PDF], in Sidney Hook (ed.), Dimensions of Mind: A Symposium (New York: New York University Press): 148-179.
        • Putnam's first article on functionalism.

      • Putnam, Hilary (1988), Representation and Reality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press).
        • An argument against functionalism, by the philosopher who first proposed it.
        • Appendix to Representation and Reality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press): 121-125.
          • "Theorem. Every ordinary open system is a realization of every abstract finite automaton."

   2. Fodor, Jerry A. (1968), Psychological Explanation: An Introductin to the Philosophy of Psychology (New York: Random House).

   3. Fodor, Jerry A. (1981), "The Mind-Body Problem", Scientific American 244(1) (January): 114-123.

   4. Thagard, Paul (1986), "Parallel Computation and the Mind-Body Problem", Cognitive Science 10: 301-318.
      • An argument for the importance of the implementing medium in functionalistic theories of mind.

   5. Block, Ned (1996), "[What Is] Functionalism[?]", Encyclopedia of Philosophy Supplement

   6. Piccinini, Gualtiero (2003), "The Mind as Neural Software: Functionalism, Computationalism, and Computational Functionalism", paper read at the APA Pacific Division (March 2004).