Abstract

Recent years have witnessed an unprecedented proliferation of introductory texts in the philosophy of mind, many of them written by eminent practitioners in the field. Never before have so many choices been available. Lowe’s book was written, we are told in the preface, in part in order to combat two trends: a tendency to treat the philosophy of mind as if it is exhausted by the mind/body problem, with its attendant catalogue of “isms”; and a growing propensity to carry on as if philosophers of mind are nothing more than junior partners within the cognitive science community, and to downplay the more traditional metaphysical concerns associated with the subject in the past. In contrast, Lowe discusses, in detail, not just the mind/body problem but mental content, sensations and appearances, perception, thought and language, rationality and artificial intelligence, action and the will, and personal identity and self-knowledge. He does so from a traditional metaphysical perspective.