Philosophy of mind and cognitive science since 1980

Abstract

In this chapter we survey Australasian philosophy of mind and cognition since 1980. In some of the fields we address, the boundaries between philosophy and related disciplines blur, with scientists participating actively in philosophical debates and philosophers in turn working in independent research groups in automated reasoning, Artificial Intelligence, cognitive science or cognitive neuropsychiatry. We seek to cite a large enough array of primary sources by Australasian philosophers to give readers significant initial guidance in each area. First we look in some detail at the mainstream debates about consciousness and physicalism which arose directly out of the earlier history of Australian materialism. We then work through the driving theories in cognitive science from its outset, through classical and connectionist versions of the computational theory of mind, and on to ideas about dynamical and extended cognition. Finally, and more briefly, we address a number of key issues or special topics with tight links to that history of foundational theories in cognitive science, looking at folk psychology and theory of mind, delusions and philosophy of psychiatry, and then discrete topics such as emotion, perception and memory.