Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction

By John Heil

Book Overview

This coursebook offers an accessible introduction to issues in the philosophy of mind, including the mind-body problem, causal interactions between the mental and the physical, computational models of thought, including: behaviorism, dualism, eliminativism, emergentism, functionalism, materialism, neutral monism, and panpsychism.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1041053754
• ISBN13: 9781041053750
• Release Date: January 2026
• Publisher: Routledge
• Length: 324 Pages
• Weight: 1.41 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

It Usually Begins With Descartes

PHILOSOPHY OF MIND is one of Routledge's "Contemporary Introduction to Philosophy" series. Although there are other similar series, this is my favorite because the contributions are particularly comprehensive.Professor Heil's work is no exception. This book takes as its point of departure (like most such works it seems) Descartes' approach to the mind/body problem. Prof. Heil then discusses important philosophical and psychological approaches (Watson and Skinner, for example) to the philosophy of mind.The work discusses some of the questions that are often left out of introductory works on the topic, such as artificial intelligence and biological evolution. This book can be used by someone who is a beginner, or someone who is familiar with the basic issues in philosophy but wishes to get a better understanding of the issues. I've just finished reading Stanley Jaki's BRAIN, MIND AND COMPUTERS which discusses many of these issue from a broader theological and philosophical perspective. I think the books complement each other quite well.