Matter and Consciousness A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind

Written mainly with the student and general reader in mind, this book explores the nature of conscious intelligence in a concise and straightforward fashion. It tackles the subject using material from a variety of related fields—philosophy, psychology, artificial intelligence, neuroscience, ethology, and evolutionary theory. Exploiting this unusually broad perspective, it provides a fresh description of the major issues in the current philosophical/scientific debate, a comprehensive discussion of the competing philosophical theories and methodological approaches, and an up-to-date outline of the most important theoretical arguments and empirical data. Following an introduction, chapters cover the ontological problem (the mind-body problem), the semantical problem, the epistemological problems (self-awareness and other minds), the methodological problem, and computers and artificial intelligence. There is a substantial chapter on the several neurosciences. A concluding chapter speculates on the distribution of intelligence in the universe, and on the possible expansion of human introspective consciousness.