Brian P. McLaughlin & Jonathan Cohen 
Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind 

Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind showcases the leading contributors to the field, debating the major questions in philosophy of mind today.

* Comprises 20 newly commissioned essays on hotly debated issues in the philosophy of mind

* Written by a cast of leading experts in their fields, essays take opposing views on 10 central contemporary debates

* A thorough introduction provides a comprehensive background to the issues explored

* Organized into three sections which explore the ontology of the mental, nature of the mental content, and the nature of consciousness

Table of Content

Notes on Contributors ix

Introduction Jonathan Cohen xii

Part I Mental Content 1

Is There a Viable Notion of Narrow Mental Content? 3

1 Cognitive Content and Propositional Attitude Attributions Gabriel Segal 5

2 There Is No Viable Notion of Narrow Content Sarah Sawyer 20

Is Externalism about Mental Content Compatible with Privileged Access? 35

3 Externalism and Privileged Access Are Consistent Anthony Brueckner 37

4 Externalism and Privileged Access Are Inconsistent Michael Mc Kinsey 53

Is the Intentional Essentially Normative? 67

5 Resisting Normativism in Psychology Georges Rey 69

6 Normativism Defended Ralph Wedgwood 85

Is There Non-Conceptual Content? 103

7 The Revenge of the Given Jerry Fodor 105

8 Are There Different Kinds of Content? Richard G. Heck Jr 117

Part II Physicalism 139

Is Non-Reductive Materialism Viable? 141

9 Everybody Has Got It: A Defense of Non-Reductive Materialism Louise Antony 143

10 The Evolving Fortunes of Eliminative Materialism Paul M. Churchland 160

Should Physicalists Be A Priori Physicalists? 183

11 A Priori Physicalism Frank Jackson 185

12 On the Limits of A Priori Physicalism Brian P. Mc Laughlin 200

Is There an Unresolved Problem of Mental Causation? 225

13 Causation and Mental Causation Jaegwon Kim 227

14 Mental Causation, or Something Near Enough Barry Loewer 243

Part III The Place Of Consciousness In Nature 265

Is Consciousness Ontologically Emergent from the Physical? 267

15 Dualist Emergentism Martine Nida-Rümelin 269

16 Against Ontologically Emergent Consciousness David Braddon-Mitchell 287

Are Phenomenal Characters and Intentional Contents of Experiences Identical? 301

17 New Troubles for the Qualia Freak Michael Tye 303

18 A Case for Qualia Sydney Shoemaker 319

Is Awareness of Our Mental Acts a Kind of Perceptual Consciousness? 333

19 All Consciousness Is Perceptual Jesse Prinz 335

20 Mental Action and Self-Awareness (I) Christopher Peacocke 358

Index 377

About the author

Brian P. Mc Laughlin is Professor and Chair in the philosophy
department at Rutgers University. He has published widely in
philosophy of mind and cognitive science, and is the co-editor of
the classic collection on the philosophy of Donald Davidson,
Actions and Events: Perspectives on the Philosophy of Donald
Davidson (Blackwell, 1988), editor of Dretske and His
Critics (Blackwell, 1991) and the forthcoming Oxford
Handbook of Philosophy of Mind.

Jonathan Cohen is Associate Professor of Philosophy at
the University of California, San Diego. He is the the author of
numerous papers in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology,
philosophy of language, metaphysics, and perception. Much of his
recent work has focused on the metaphysics of color properties.