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Philosophy Of Mind (Dimensions of Philosophy)

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I have a bit of an obsession with introductions to the philosophy of mind. I went a bit overboard in preparing for my Ph.D. comprehensive exam in the philosophy of mind. I have read Matter and Consciousness - Revised Edition: A Contemporary Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, The Mechanical Mind: A Philosophical Introduction to Minds, Machines and Mental Representation, Mind: A Brief Introduction (Fundamentals of Philosophy), Philosophy of Mind: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy), Philosophy of Mind: An Overview for Cognitive Science, Introducing Persons: Theories and Arguments in the Philosophy of Mind, Gray Matters: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Mind and Cognition: An Introduction, Contemporary Philosophy of Mind: A Contentiously Classical Approach, The Character of Mind: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (OPUS), and a couple others. I can say that, without question, Jaegwon Kim's "Philosophy of Mind" is the finest, particularly in its revised and expanded Second Edition. It may also be the most intellectually challenging of the bunch. Out of many introductory books on the philosophy of mind, I find myself returning to this book the most.

Kim gives a thorough-going overview of contemporary philosophy of mind. He is a masterful writer with the ability to explain difficult material as simply as it can be explained without oversimplifying. There are many more basic introductions to the philosophy of mind, but Kim's is notable for its authoritativeness, its clarity of exposition, and its attention to the nuts and bolts of major philosophical arguments in the philosophy of mind.

I think the book would make an ideal companion to a rigorous undergraduate (or even graduate) introductory course in the philosophy of mind.

Kim's "Philosophy of Mind" is the kind of book that can be read profitably alongside many of the major philosophy papers written in contemporary philosophy journals. At the end of each chapter Kim provides the go-to sources for each of the ideas covered in a chapter. In that sense, the book provides the perfect jumping off point for more in-depth work in the philosophy of mind. For those outside academic philosophy, the presentation of ideas might not be the most accommodating. Despite Kim's clear writing, much of the material is complex and will involve reading and rereading carefully. One will have to review the steps in the arguments if one wants to come away from the book with a fluency in the ideas treated. Although the material is rigorous, Kim is to be credited for making accessible the kind of philosophy of mind found in contemporary philosophy journals. Much of the language could as easily be found in one of Kim's academic books or papers. So the writing can be dry at times simply because it is dense with argument.

Kim is perhaps the world expert on supervenience and mental causation, subjects dealt with in depth here, and, given the recency of publication, many of the ideas presented represent Kim's latest thinking on the problems, sometimes involving modifications of earlier positions he has advocated.

If one is interested in the intersection of cognitive science and philosophy of mind this is definitely not the book for you. More appropriate would be Andy Clark's "Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science", Tim Crane's "The Mechanical Mind", or Churchland's "Matter and Consciousness", the last of which is particularly good at relating philosophy of mind to cognitive neuroscience, although Churchland's treatment could stand to be updated. There is no attempt by Kim to engage with empirical research in any matter whatsoever. So someone inspired by the work of, for example, Daniel Dennett in "Consciousness Explained" should definitely look elsewhere.

I am a bit surprised to read a 338 page guide to the philosophy of mind that nowhere mentions Daniel Dennett, Colin McGinn, or the Churchlands. There is also no discussion of the language of thought hypothesis. In addition, nowhere will one find discussions of personal identity or free will, which I suppose is appropriate given the aims of the book. What we find are the bare bones big topics in academic philosophy of mind: dualism, psychoneural identity theory, functionalism, mental causation, consciousness, mental content (i.e. externalism and internalism), and reductionism. If one is looking for a more accessible outsider's guide to philosophy of mind, one could do worse than Searle's "Mind: An Introduction". But if the above topics are the ones that interest you, there is no better place than Kim's book to get a grounding in them.

Kim's work is the clearest introduction to major issues in the philosophy of mind in print. Much written in the field is convluted and Delphic in every aspect except length. This work is an excellent place to begin an examination. The chapters on functionialism are especially excellent.

This is quite simply an excellent introduction to the philosophy of mind. I purchased this book for Kim's class at Brown and found it to be a very well written presentation of the relevant history of and competing arguments for all the main topics in the philosophy of mind. Of course Kim has his own argument to present and makes his case for it where appropriate but never preaches to the reader. Overall it is a very accessible text - highly recommended for anyone wondering where to start in the field.

This book is a great resource for philosophy students (or other individuals) looking to get a clear overview of the different theories and viewpoints in the philosophy of mind field.

I am reading this book for a class and may need to cite it in some of my papers. So, please Amazon, add to the Kindle edition page numbers that correspond to those of a hard copy of the book.

I can agree with much written in the earlier reviews (style, topics, etc.). From a European continental view it is very odd that Kim never even mentions that there have been some thought on these topics from contemporary continental philosophy too. He mentions Brentano only once and very brief, but you won't find anything about Husserl or Merleau-Ponty. Also other more Anglo-Saxon alternatives like panpsychism (Whitehead, Hartshorne, Griffin) are completely omitted as if they do not exist. I understand that he makes his choices for fields and opinions he is most familiar with (analytic philosophy and physicalism), but ignoring completely everything else gives me the impression that he is intellectually dishonest (because he once replied on Griffin's work) and indulgent navel-gazing (because philosophy is much more than analytic philosophy). So a small account on dismissing other movements in the preface or introduction would be nice, like he does with his choice to focus mainly on mind-brain problems. On some topics he is too elaborate and his pseudo-mathematical formulations are distracting. So except from that and his one-sidedness it is a good, clear introduction.

With regard to an earlier reviewer, Kim does not attack dualism more so than any other modern philosopher since almost all of them with the exception of a few crackpots have abandoned dualism -- or at least Descartes' conception of it. There is good reason for this since his conception of a non-material thinking "substance" seems to me to be completely incompatible with our notions of modern science and the laws of physics. Indeed, it is an utter absurdity to argue that a non-material substance that does not occupy space nor possesses any other physical properties can somehow influence or cause effects in the physical world. How can a simple desire to get a drink -- if it is no more than the product of a non-material substance as Descartes urged -- cause my neurons to start firing so that I get out of my chair and get a drink? Thus, modern philosophers have for the most part abandoned cartesian dualism.

That being said, Kim's book is interesting and does a good job of surveying the different issues concerning the mind-body problem. My main objection is that it is so broad that it fails to delve into some of the more interesting aspects of the problem in sufficient detail. And, in some respects it is quite boring. His overuse of variables when ordinary sentences and syntax would suffice makes the reading unduly burdensome and detracts from the ideas presented in the book.

In my opinion a much more readable work that deals with the mind-body problem is David Papineau's "Thinking about Consciousness."

I am in a Master in Contemporary Philosophy and I came to study Kim's book. Each chapter of the book is a discussion of a concrete theory of mind-body relationship. Kim opens with the dualist Cartesian theory, and ends up with his own position: a mix of reduction of identity and of functions that equates mental states to its physical properties.

However, it is not only a list or a historical survey of the mind-body problem. It is also an exposition and an inner understanding of how the main problems have happened to be what they actually are. Interestingly, in this second edition, Kim adds the first chapter dealing with Cartesian dualism, that was missing in the first edition. This means, in my opinion, that to fully grasp the problems faced by Kim the framework is the dualist one. Supervenience, physicalism, reduction, and all the other aspects showed by Kim to solve the problem, are to be correctly understood upon the background of dualism.

To be honest, I come from continental philosophy, and I have devoted some time to Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and the so called existential phenomenology of French language. One of the main achievements of these thinkers is, in my opinion, to have successfully rejected, the dualism framework of Descartes. Indeed, the major problems faced by Merleau-Ponty are a new understanding of Descartes and Kant problems but upon a new base, a base that rejects in the very beginning the opposition between mind and body. Unfortunately, here is not the place of a positive exposition of a non dualist anthropology. In this sense, Kim's book is to me somehow naïf.

An example will suffice to make the point. The crux of Kim book is the "hard problem" and the "explanatory gap", two faces of the same coin. The problem of the hard problem is: how is it possible that a physical organism is capable to feel pain or any conscious emotion? The explanatory gap faces this other problem: how is it that certain physical processes cause pain and not itch, for instance? What links the physical base to the conscious experience? It is obvious to me the dualist design of the questions. According to this vision mind is a complete and perfect reality on its own and can be fully described without any reference to the body. And the same goes for the body. But that is an abstraction that understands the body as a physiological organism, under the point of view of natural sciences as physiology, neurology or biology. But that is not a correct description of the body as is ordinarily lived. Anybody relates to his own body as an assemblage of muscles, organs, molecules, etc. The direct relation to our own body is a relationship of meaning and sense: that is, a relationship that already includes a non physical -a mental- horizon.

In my opinion Kim misses the point because does not offer a correct description of the ordinary experience of the body. In conclusion: interesting book but under a dualist anthropology.

Great job! I ordered this book on 9/5(wed.) it was shipped on 9/7(fri) and received 9/11(tues.) This book was in stock using regular shipping and received earlier than stated. This experience was so great, I cancelled another book order with a different company and ordered again the following week.

I get the overall feeling that Kim has some personal beef with Descarte. His whole goal seems to be that of destroying the Cartesian view of a body and mind unison. He does have many good things to say in Philosophy of Mind though. The only problem is that he trys so hard to turn man, a thinking thing, in to a rock. An object. In Kim's defense, he does show both sides of the coin and trys not to preach to much. Still preaches, but I guess thats what I bought the book for in the first place.