Philosophy Of Mind (Dimensions of Philosophy) (Paperback)

by Jaegwon Kim (Author) "In coping with the myriad things that come our way at every moment of our waking life, we try to organize them into manageable structures..." (more)
Key Phrases: qualia nihilism, qualia supervenience, psychophysical anomalism, New York, Cambridge University Press, Ned Block (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Ranging over traditional and contemporary accounts of the mind, Philosophy of Mind is a model of exposition, clarity, and fairness. Gracefully written and marked by philosophical elegance, it is a classic text by a major figure in the field.

About the Author

Jaegwon Kim is William Perry Faunce Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. He is the author of Supervenience and Mind (1993) and of many important papers on the philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, and the philosophy of science.

Product Details

• Paperback: 272 pages
• Publisher: Westview Press (March 14, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0813307767
• ISBN-13: 978-0813307763
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #476,064 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A very lucid introduction to contrmporary philosophy of mind, January 7, 1999

By	Gregory Klebanoff (Frostburg, Maryland) - See all my reviews

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.

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Authoritative survey of major issues in philosophy of mind, May 11, 2007

By	Will Tanizaki (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Philosophy of Mind (Dimensions of Philosophy) (Paperback)

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.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Kim's view on Philosophy of Mind, January 2, 2009

By	Peter Bogaerts "Peter" (Belgium) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Philosophy of Mind (Dimensions of Philosophy) (Paperback)

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.