Philosophy of Mind

While much has been written on Descartes' theory of mind and ideas, no systematic study of his theory of sensory representation and misrepresentation is currently available in the literature. This book is an ambitious attempt to fill this gap. It argues against the established view that Cartesian sensations are mere qualia by defending the view that they are representational; it offers a descriptivist-causal account of their representationality that is critical of, and differs from, all other extant accounts (such as, for example, causal, teleofunctional and purely internalist accounts); and it has the advantage of providing an adequate solution to the problem of sensory misrepresentation within Descartes' internalist theory of ideas. In sum, the book offers a novel account of the representationality of Cartesian sensations; provides a panoramic overview, and critical assessment, of the scholarly literature on this issue; and places Descartes' theory of sensation in the central position it deserves among the philosophical and scientific investigations of the workings of the human mind.

Self-consciousness and personal identity are fundamental features of human subjectivity. Even present-day discussions of these issues in philosophy of mind are strongly influenced by the conceptual frameworks given to them in early modern thought. This book discusses the understanding of self-consciousness and personal identity as well as related issues, such as individuation, consciousness, reflection, self-concern, accountability, and conceptions of the soul and the afterlife, as it developed in early modern philosophy; that is, in seventeenth- and eighteenth century thinkers, such as Descartes, Locke, Leibniz, Wolff, and Hume as well as their early critics, followers and other philosophical contemporaries. The book critically evaluates these contributions and explains the arguments in their historical context. It covers more than a hundred years of philosophical debate in France, Britain and Germany without neglecting to discuss either the details of the arguments or alternative interpretations.

This volume has three aims. First, historians of philosophy have typically focused on the discussions of the moral relevance of emotions, and with the exception of scholars of ancient philosophy, neglected the place of emotions in cognitive life. This collection of articles refocuses the discussion of emotion in the medieval and early modern periods to their role in cognition. Second, though many have aimed to clarify relationship between the later thinkers and their predecessors with regard to issues in metaphysics and epistemology, there has been very little effort at tracing similar lines of thought about emotion. As a whole, the contributions to this volume serve to begin a discussion about the continuities between medieval and early modern thinking about the emotions. In this regard, there is also a discussion of the emotions of cognitive life of the Renaissance. Though we get only a snapshot of a period of philosophical work often passed over, even this snapshot invites questions about how to weave an intellectual history about accounts of our emotions in our cognitive lives. Finally, attention to the concerns that engage philosophers of the medieval, renaissance and early modern periods can inform the contemporary debate regarding the relationship between emotions, cognition, and reason. The thirteen contributions explore this from the point of view of four key themes: the situation of emotions within the human mind; the intentionality of emotions and their role in cognition; emotions and action; the role of emotion in self-understanding and the social situation of individuals.

This book offers a new reading of Hume’s theory of personal identity — his ‘bundle theory’ of the self or mind — and his later rejection of that theory. Contrary to what many have supposed, Hume does not in endorsing the bundle theory hold that there are no subjects of experience, as many have supposed. Nor does he hold that the mind is just a series of experiences. His base position, as a ‘sceptical realist’, is that the ‘essence of the mind [is] unknown’ (Treatise, Introduction §8). His (epistemological) claim is simply that we have no empirically justifiable reason to believe in the existence of a persisting subject, or a mind that is more than a series of experiences (each with its own subject). Why does Hume later reject the bundle theory? Many think he is dissatisfied with his psychological account of how we come to believe in a persisting self. But his problem is much more serious. The keystone of Hume’s philosophy is that the succession of our experiences is governed by a ‘uniting principle’ or ‘bond of union’. Unfortunately, an empiricist philosophy that takes a bundle of ontologically distinct experiences to be the only empirically legitimate conception of the mind can't make explanatory use of those notions in the way Hume does. As he says in the Appendix to the Treatise: having ‘loosen'd all our particular perceptions’, in endorsing the bundle theory, he can’t ‘explain the principle of connexion, which binds them together’.

The theory of action underlying Immanuel Kant's moral theory is the subject of this book. What “maxims” are, and how we act on maxims, are explained here in light of both the historical context of Kant's thought, and his classroom lectures on psychology and ethics. Arguing against the current of much recent scholarship, a strong case is made for interpreting Kant as having embraced psychological determinism, a version of the “belief-desire model” of human motivation, and a literal, “two-worlds” metaphysics. On this interpretation, actions in the familiar, sensible world are always effects of prior psychological causes. Their explaining causal laws are the maxims of agents' characters. And agents act freely if, acting in an intelligible world, what they do there results in their having the characters they have here, in the sensible world. In this way Kant's theory of action coordinates thoroughgoing causal determinism in the natural world with human freedom and moral responsibility. This line of interpretation is fruitful also for addressing some familiar problems in Kant's moral psychology. It allows explaining actions caused by admirable inclinations as “virtuous”, without requiring the motive of duty behind every morally praiseworthy action.

What is it to occupy a first‐person stance? Is the first‐personal idea one has of oneself in conflict with the idea of oneself as a physical being? How, if there is a conflict, is it to be resolved? In this book a new way to address those questions, drawing inspiration from theories about the self in first millennial India, is formulated. These philosophers do not regard the first‐person stance as in conflict with the natural—their idea of nature not that of scientific naturalism but rather a liberal naturalism non‐exclusive of the normative. A wide range of ideas are explored: reflexive self‐representation, mental files, and quasi‐subject analyses of subjective consciousness; the theory of emergence as transformation; embodiment and the idea of a bodily self; the centrality of the emotions to the unity of self. Buddhism's claim that there is no self too readily assumes an account of what a self must be. This book argues instead that the self is a negotiation between self‐presentation and normative avowal, a transaction grounded in unconscious mind. Immersion, participation, and coordination are jointly constitutive of self, the first‐person stance at once lived, engaged, and underwritten. And all is in harmony with the idea of the natural.