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August 1997
5 3/8 x 8, 224 pp.
$23.00/£17.95 (PAPER)
Short

ISBN-10:
0-262-54089-4
ISBN-13:
978-0-262-54089-6

Series
Bradford Books
Jean Nicod Lectures
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Table of Contents
Naturalizing the Mind
Fred Dretske

Table of Contents and Sample Chapters

How can the baffling problems of phenomenal experience be accounted for? In this provocative book, Fred Dretske argues that to achieve an understanding of the mind it is not enough to understand the biological machinery by means of which the mind does its job. One must understand what the mind's job is and how this task can be performed by a physical system—the nervous system.

Naturalizing the Mind skillfully develops a representational theory of the qualitative, the phenomenal, the what-it-is-like aspects of the mind that have defied traditional forms of naturalism. Central to Dretske's approach is the claim that the phenomenal aspects of perceptual experiences are one and the same as external, real-world properties that experience represents objects as having. Combined with an evolutionary account of sensory representation, the result is a completely naturalistic account of phenomenal consciousness.

About the Author

Fred Dretske is Senior Research Scholar in the Department of Philosophy, Duke University.




See Other Titles In:
Cognition, Brain, & Behavior
 Philosophy of Mind
Neuroscience
 Neurophysiology & Neuroanatomy
Philosophy
 Philosophy of Mind
 
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