What is the role of consciousness in our mental lives? Declan Smithies argues here that consciousness is essential to explaining how we can acquire knowledge and justified belief about ourselves and the world around us. On this view, unconscious beings cannot form justified beliefs and so they cannot know anything at all. Consciousness is the ultimate basis of all knowledge and epistemic justification. Smithies builds a sustained argument for the epistemic role of phenomenal consciousness which draws on a range of considerations in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. His position combines two key claims. The first is phenomenal mentalism, which says that epistemic justification is determined by the phenomenally individuated facts about your mental states. The second is accessibilism, which says that epistemic justification is luminously accessible in the sense that you're always in a position to know which beliefs you have epistemic justification to hold. Smithies integrates these two claims into a unified theory of epistemic justification, which he calls phenomenal accessibilism. The book is divided into two parts, which converge on this theory of epistemic justification from opposite directions. Part 1 argues from the bottom up by drawing on considerations in the philosophy of mind about the role of consciousness in mental representation, perception, cognition, and introspection. Part 2 argues from the top down by arguing from general principles in epistemology about the nature of epistemic justification. These mutually reinforcing arguments form the basis for a unified theory of the epistemic role of phenomenal consciousness, one that bridges the gap between epistemology and philosophy of mind.

It's hard to conceive of a topic of more broad and personal interest than the study of the mind. In addition to its traditional investigation by the disciplines of psychology, psychiatry, and neuroscience, the mind has also been a focus of study in the fields of philosophy, economics, anthropology, linguistics, computer science, molecular biology, education, and literature. In all these approaches, there is an almost universal fascination with how the mind works and how it affects our lives and our behavior. Studies of the mind and brain have crossed many exciting thresholds in recent years, and the study of mind now represents a thoroughly cross-disciplinary effort. Researchers from a wide range of disciplines seek answers to such questions as: What is mind? How does it operate? What is consciousness? This encyclopedia brings together scholars from the entire range of mind-related academic disciplines from across the arts and humanities, social sciences, life sciences, and computer science and engineering to explore the multidimensional nature of the human mind.

The Main Issues That Figure In The Very Title Of This Volume Are Indicative Of Its Scope And Contents. First, Philosophical Studies In Consciousness Have Their Persuppositions As Well As Implications. Secondly, In Order To Understant Clearly The Said Pre-Suppositions And Implications, The Intended Reader Group Needs To Tbe Introduced At Least To Some Core Concepts Of Philosophy And Science In Their Modern Sense. Thirdly, Since This Work Is Cross-Disciplinary In Its Orientation, The Conceptual Linkages Between Science And Philosophy Have Been Explored By Distinguished Philosophers And Scientists In Several Contributions To This Publication. Finally, A Conscious Attempt Has Been Made In Many Papers Of This Work That Every Branch Of Valid Knowledge, Philosophy Or Science, However Theoretically Abstract It May Be, Has Its Practical Moorings And The Same Are Temporarily Traceable. From The Available History Of Philosophy And Science It Is Found That These Disciplines Were Integrated In The Ancient Times. Differentiation Has Been Due To Endlessly Increasing Specialization Within Each Discipline. Even Today Many Philosophers And Historians Of Science Are Studying Carefully The Relation Between Different Strata Of Disciplines. The Emphasis On The Above Issues Is Intended, Among Other Things, To Avoid The Extremes Of Reductionosm, Mistakes Of Value-Fact Dualism, And To Clarify The Connection Between Theory And Practice, Experience And Experiment, Discovery And Legitimization Of Truth-Claims. In An Anthology Like This, Difference In Pre-Suppositions And Conclusions Of The Contributors, Cannot Be Ruled Out. Respect For The Freedom Of Thought, A Hallmark Of The Project, Has Been Tempered By Commitment To Reasoning. This Book, Primary Meant For Fairly Educated Readers, Is Likely To Be Of Interest To The Researchers In The Areas Of Social And Natural Science, And The Reading Public.

List of members in v. 1- .

Delaney (philosophy, U. of Notre Dame) argues that the work of American philosopher Peirce (1839-1914) can best be understood as an investigation of the logic of science, the conditions for the possibility of science, and the speculative extrapolations from science. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Issues for 1896-1900 contain papers of the Aristotelian Society.

Philosophical Perspectives, an annual, aims to publish original essays by formost thinkers in their fields, with each volume confined to a main area of philosophical research.

This volume contains fourteen essays discussing recent issues in the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. The collection is arranged into three sections: one on language, one on the intersection of language and mind, and a final section on mind. The topics include the context-sensitivity of semantics, anaphora, proper names, the nature of understanding, folk psychology and the Theory of Mind, self-awareness, the structure of the human mind and the extent to which it is modular, among others.

This book collects some of McDowell’s most influential papers of the last two decades. The essays deal with themes such as the interpretation of Aristotle’s and Plato’s ethical writings, questions in moral philosophy that arise out of the Greek tradition, Wittengensteinian ideas about reason in action, and issues central to philosophy of mind.