McLaughlin and Cohen present a series of 10 debates dealing with the issues of mental content, physicalism, and the place of consciousness in nature. The collection is intended to be suitable for use as an introductory text on these topics but some of the papers are much better suited for use in graduate seminars than for undergraduates as they require knowledge of other areas of philosophy in order to fully understand them. That said, the introduction gives a useful overview of each debate and each has been given a heading making it clear what the central issue at stake is. Most of the articles are divided into sections with sub-headings that make the structure of the argument obvious. The bibliographies could be taken as guides to further reading and some of the authors use their footnotes to give suggestions on the most useful reading on a particular issue.

In the section on mental content, the papers address the issues of individualism about content, externalism and self-knowledge, the normativity of content, and the nature of non-conceptual content.   The first of these debates sees Gabriel Segal arguing against, and Sarah Sawyer arguing for externalism or anti-individualism about mental content.

Segal identifies two anti-individualist or externalist theses, weak and strong consumerism, and attacks both these. Very roughly, his argument is that the typical examples that are used to motivate anti-individualism can be understood as involving a subject’s use of a neologism rather than a term expressing the standard concept in question. Sawyer responds to this by arguing that viewing our discourse as containing these neologisms introduces an imprecision incompatible with scientific psychology. Although the papers are related, with one section of Sawyer’s paper offering criticism of Segal and Segal responding to Sawyer’s criticism Sawyer’s criticism relates to the general strategy that Segal employs rather than to the arguments that he offers. Sawyer’s paper is extremely clear and gives a good overview of both the motivation for anti-individualism and the reasons for thinking that narrow content must nonetheless have some role to play before giving her arguments against these views.

The second debate over mental content concerns the tension that some see between anti-individualism and the subject’s privileged access to the content of their own thoughts. The arguments that Anthony Brueckner and Michael McKinsay put forward in their papers on this topic turn on the relational nature of the predicates used in ascriptions of mental content. Both papers are clearly written but the background knowledge that they require from the reader mean that they would be best suited for students that are studying philosophy of language in addition to philosophy of mind.

The debate between Georges Rey and Ralph Wedgwood on whether the intentional is essentially normative is an example of this collection at its best. The papers are clear and well written and both engage directly with the other while going beyond this and tackling arguments offered against their theses raised by contributors to the wider debate on normativism.

The papers in the collection on non-conceptual content by Jerry Fodor and Richard G. Heck Jr don’t form a debate in the way that the other papers in this collection do. Both authors agree that there is non-conceptual content – the disagreement between them centres on the account that should be given of non-conceptual content. Their approaches are not dissimilar, both arguing that belief states have certain features and that the existence of mental states that fail to display these features show that there is non-conceptual content. Fodor, however, tells his story at the level of representation while Heck is concerned with structural features at the level of content.

Heck’s paper particularly is a very good introductory paper on the issue of non-conceptual content. He devotes space to the discussion of foundational issues such as what a concept might be and provides an illuminating account of the standard ‘richness’ argument for non-conceptual content.

The set of debates on physicalism kicks off with papers by Louise Anthony and Paul M. Churchland. Anthony argues for non-reductive physicalism on the grounds that psychological states have an important explanatory and causal role.  Churchalnd argues for eliminative physicalism, beginning with a discussion of sensory states and then moving on to argue for the elimination of propositional attitudes. Both papers are thoroughly readable and thought provoking. Churchland’s account of Hebbian learning and the neuroscience of sensory representation are fascinating and, in my opinion, he makes a good case for reductive physicalism although not for the reductive materialism that he advocates.

The second set of papers on physicalism sees Frank Jackson and Brian McLaughlin tackle the question of whether the determination of the mental by the physical is a priori or a posteriori. Jackson gives two arguments, one semantic and one epistemological for the apriority of physicalism. Jackson’s paper has an accessibility that McLaughlin’s paper lacks. Understanding the McLaughlin paper would be easier for students with some knowledge of both philosophy of mind and metaphysics, and the numerous footnotes make the paper heavier going than might be expected in what is intended as a suitable introductory text. However, if one wants to really understand what is at issue between the a priori and a posteriori physicalists then the effort spent getting to grips with the material will pay dividends. McLaughlin’s paper also contains a strong response to Jackson’s epistemological argument in its short final section.

The discussion between Jaegwon Kim and Barry Loewer on mental causation is excellent. Kim sets the scene with a brief exposition of some of the key literature on mental causation. He argues, using Ned Hall’s distinction between the productive and dependence notions of causation, that mental causation must be a case of productive causation and that if this is the case mental events can only be causally efficacious if reductive physicalism is true. Loewer also uses Hall’s distinction but argues that mental causation should be understood on the dependence model which make it compatible with non-reductive physicalism.

The first of the series of debates in the final section on the place of consciousness in nature begins with Martine Nida-Rümelin’s paper arguing for dualist emergentism. This view seeks to combine what is most attractive about both dualism and physicalism by claiming that consciousness, despite being distinct from the physical, nonetheless emerges from purely physical properties and laws. David Braddon-Mitchell argues against this position by examining exactly how the emergence of consciousness from the physical is to be explained. He claims that on one plausible way of telling this story the resultant picture is just old-fashioned dualism and on the other plausible account the story is not dualist at all. It is a weakness of this debate that Nida-Rümelin spends more time explaining which picture of mental causation the emergentist dualist should subscribe to than she spends going through the motivation and arguments for her account. If one is already convinced of her position then these considerations might add support to her view but if one is not convinced I don’t think that much that she presents would change one’s mind. Given this, when Braddon-Mitchell attacks the emergentist dualist view in his paper, the reader gets the impression that he’s arguing against a position that isn’t well motivated.

The section on the place of consciousness in nature continues with a debate between Tye and Shoemaker on the phenomenal character of experience. Tye argues that phenomenal properties are wholly representational while Shoemaker is of the view that there is also a non-representational element to the phenomenal aspect of experience. Both of these articles would be suitable for undergraduate students. Tye in particular sets out his argument step by step and the use of examples and thought experiments makes it accessible to someone coming to this topic for the first time.

The final debate in the collection is one of the best in the collection. Jesse Prinz argues that our awareness of our thoughts is a case of perceptual consciousness. Christopher Peacocke argues against this position, claiming that our awareness of our mental actions is a form of action-awareness and that this awareness is not perceptual. Prinz's paper is well written, clearly argued and thought provoking but I find myself disagreeing with the majority of his arguments. For example, Prinz uses a model that Chris Frith (1992) has used to explain delusions of control and thought insertion in schizophrenia to back up his claim that action awareness is perceptual. On Frith's model the sense of agency that we have for thoughts and actions arises from the successful operation of a comparator mechanism. I think that Prinz is mistaken in thinking that what gets compared at this mechanism is anticipated and actual sensory feedback. Although he marshals some empirical support for this interpretation it rules out the functioning of this mechanism for the rapid correction of motor errors which Frith uses as support for his theory.

Peacocke's paper doesn't dispute that Prinz's account might be correct for some thoughts but showing that awareness of mental action is not a species of perceptual consciousness would be enough to defeat Prinz's position and this is what Peacocke's paper sets out to do. The structure makes his argument easy to follow and he gives a useful account of mental action before arguing that our awareness of mental action is a form of action awareness rather than perceptual awareness.  His footnotes contain helpful suggestions for further reading on the topic. These two papers together would form an excellent introduction to the topics of awareness of thought or mental action.

Although this collection could be used to introduce students to the topics covered by the individual debates I think that the shared themes that run across several debates and topics mean that it would be more usefully read either in its entirety or as an introduction to a topic. For instance, some of the issues addressed in Kims’ paper are related to the discussion between Churchland and Anthony, both of which have relevance to the debate on content despite being in the section on physicalism.

On the downside, in a couple of cases authors seem to have tried to cover material that they have spread over several earlier papers. In some sense this may be a benefit as it provides an overview of these earlier contributions but sometimes one is left feeling that it would be necessary to read these previous articles in order to fully get to grips with the position that the paper in the present volume contains.  Occasionally the ordering of the articles in a pair would be preferable if reversed. For example, Segal’s article receives clarification from points raised in Sawyer’s article and in the case of the Brueckner and McKinsey, and Rey and Wedgwood debates criticism of an argument is given before the argument. Overall, however, this is a good collection that does what it promises and provides a good introduction to some important issues.

Frith, C. (1992) The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Schizophrenia. Hove, East Sussex: Erlbaum

© 2008 Toni Tochel

Toni Tochel is a graduate student in philosophy at Warwick University.

Keywords: philosophy, psychology