The Science of the Mind

by Owen J. Flanagan

Consciousness emerges as the key topic in this second edition of Owen Flanagan's popular introduction to cognitive science and the philosophy of psychology. in a new chapter Flanagan develops a neurophilosophical theory of subjective mental life. He brings recent developments in the theory of neuronal group selection and connectionism to bear on the problems of the evolution of consciousness, qualia, the unique first-personal aspects of consciousness, the causal role of consciousness, and the function and development of the sense of personal identity. He has also substantially revised the chapter on cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence to incorporate recent discussions of connectionism and parallel distributed processing.

Genres: Psychology, Philosophy, Science

440 pages, Paperback

First published April 26, 1984

About the author

Owen Flanagan, Ph.D. (born 1949) is the James B. Duke Professor of Philosophy and Professor of Neurobiology at Duke University. Flanagan has done work in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, ethics, contemporary ethical theory, moral psychology, as well as Buddhist and Hindu conceptions of the self.

Flanagan earned his Ph.D from Boston University and his Bachelor of arts degree from Fordham University.

Flanagan has written extensively on consciousness. He has been realistic about the difficulty of consciousness as a scientific and philosophical problem, but optimistic about the chance of solving the problem. One of the problems in a study of consciousness is the hidden way in which conscious states are dependent on brain states. Flanagan has proposed that there is a "natural method" to go about understanding consciousness that involves creating a science of mind. Three key elements of this developing science are: 1) paying attention to subjective reports on conscious experiences, 2) incorporating the results from psychology and cognitive science, and 3) including the results from neuroscience that will reveal how neuronal systems produce consciousness.

Flanagan is currently on the Editorial Board of Greater Good Magazine, published by the Greater Good Science Center of the University of California, Berkeley. Flanagan's contributions include the interpretation of scientific research into the roots of compassion, altruism, and peaceful human relationships.

-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owen_Fla...

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a really wonderful survey of and primer to the field of philosophy and science of the mind. The book is a little dated now but most of the material holds up well even given more recent developments in brain science and information science, to name the two most relevant contributors. There is an excellent and fair-minded survey and appraisal of various approaches to the science of mind, some of which are perhaps of more antiquarian interest (Freudianism, Behaviorism), but some of which are still very much in the forefront of research and debate. I appreciated the fact that Flanagan does not shy away from what philosopher David Chalmers dubs the "hard problem of consciousness"; i.e., how is it possible for a few pounds of meat to produce the variegated and bewilderingly complex phenomenon we call consciousness with all its first-person qualitative and intentional properties? Flanagan is optimistic that natural science can and will eventually deliver on a full-blown science of mind, provided that we are appropriately circumspect about what it is reasonable to expect from such a theory, and in the concluding chapter he offers a few suggestions about how the basic contours of such a science will emerge. I found myself less impressed with his account of intentional states and semantic content than I was with his explanation of how and why qualia emerge, but I found his commitment to naturalism reasonable overall. My own belief is that the current models of information processing are still insufficient to explain how and why the brain does what it does, and the brain itself will doubtless be our best tutor when it comes to expanding and refining those models. In any event, this is a really worthwhile read for anyone interested in the subject, one of the most interesting frontiers of knowledge.