Embodied Minds in Action

by Robert Hanna, Michelle Maiese

Overview

In Embodied Minds in Action, Robert Hanna and Michelle Maiese work out a unified treatment of three fundamental philosophical problems: the mind-body problem, the problem of mental causation, and the problem of action. This unified treatment rests on two basic claims. The first is that conscious, intentional minds like ours are essentially embodied. This entails that our minds are necessarily spread throughout our living, organismic bodies and belong to their complete neurobiological constitution. So minds like ours are necessarily alive. The second claim is that essentially embodied minds are self-organizing thermodynamic systems. This entails that our mental lives consist in the possibility and actuality of moving our own living organismic bodies through space and time, by means of our conscious desires. The upshot is that we are essentially minded animals who help to create the natural world through our own agency. This doctrine—the Essential Embodiment Theory—is a truly radical idea which subverts the traditionally opposed and seemingly exhaustive categories of Dualism and Materialism, and offers a new paradigm for contemporary mainstream research in the philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199230310
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	03/01/2009
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	430
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Robert Hanna is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (OUP, 2001), Kant, Science, and Human Nature (OUP, 2006), and Rationality and Logic (MIT, 2006).

Michelle Maiese is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Emmanuel College, Boston. Her research focuses on issues in philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, and the emotions.

Table of Contents

Introduction1. Consciousnesslo and Essential Embodiment I: The Basics2. Consciousnesslo and Essential Embodiment II: Types and Structures3. Essentially Embodied Agency I: Actions, Causes, and Reasons4. Essentially Embodied Agency II: Guidance and Trying5. Essentially Embodied Agency III: Emotive Causation6. The Metaphysics of Agency I: The Problem of Mental Causation7. The Metaphysics of Agency II: And How to Solve It8. The Metaphysics of Agency III: Where the Action IsBibliography