New Perspectives on Type Identity: The Mental and the Physical

Cambridge University Press
Edition: Illustrated, 3/8/2012
EAN 9781107000148, ISBN10: 1107000149

Hardcover, 304 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 2.3 cm
Language: English

The type identity theory, according to which types of mental state are identical to types of physical state, fell out of favour for some years but is now being considered with renewed interest. Many philosophers are critically re-examining the arguments which were marshalled against it, finding in the type identity theory both resources to strengthen a comprehensive, physicalistic metaphysics and a useful tool in understanding the relationship between developments in psychology and new results in neuroscience. This volume brings together leading philosophers of mind, whose essays challenge in new ways the standard objections to type identity theory, such as the multiple realizability objection and the modal argument. Other essays show how cognitive science and neuroscience are lending new support to type identity theory and still others provide, extend and improve traditional arguments concerning the theory's explanatory power.

Introduction Simone Gozzano and Christopher S. Hill
1. Acquaintance and the mind-body problem Katalin Balog
2. Identity, reduction, and conserved mechanisms
perspectives from circadian rhythm research William Bechtel
3. Property identity and reductive explanation Ansgar Beckermann
4. A brief history of neuroscience's actual influences on mind-brain reductionism John Bickle
5. Type-identity conditions for phenomenal properties Simone Gozzano
6. Locating qualia
do they reside in the brain or in the body and the world? Christopher S. Hill
7. In defense of the identity theory Mark I Frank Jackson
8. The very idea of token physicalism Jaegwon Kim
9. About face
philosophical naturalism, the heuristic identity theory, and recent findings about prosopagnosia Robert McCauley
10. On justifying neurobiologicalism for consciousness Brian McLaughlin
11. The causal contribution of mental events Alyssa Ney
12. Return of the zombies? John Perry
13. Identity, variability, and multiple realization in the special sciences Lawrence Shapiro and Thomas Polger
Bibliography
Index.

"...provides perspectives on the type-identity thesis that are both philosophically acute and informed by recent findings in the neurosciences. In addition, many of the contributions provide insightful historical accounts of the fortunes of the type-identity thesis -- and indeed, more generally, of physicalistic accounts of the mind. Thus the essays in this anthology are not merely individually interesting, and well worth reading on their own, but the volume as a whole hangs together in a way that is unusually instructive, and would be an excellent and provocative choice for a graduate seminar in the philosophy of mind."
--Janet Levin, University of Southern California, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews