Having Thought: Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind

by John Haugeland

Overview

The unifying theme of these thirteen essays is understanding. What is it? What does it take to have it? What does it presuppose in what can be understood? In the first group of essays, John Haugeland addresses mind and intelligence. Intelligibility comes to the fore in a set of “metaphysical” pieces on analog and digital systems and supervenience. In the third set of papers, Haugeland elaborates and then undermines a battery of common presuppositions about the foundational notions of intentionality and representation. Finally, the fourth and most recent group of essays confronts the essential character of understanding in relation to what is understood. The necessary interdependence between personality and intelligence is developed and explained, specifically in the conditions of the possibility of objective scientific knowledge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674004153
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	09/15/2000
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	400
Sales rank:	939,324
Product dimensions:	5.69(w) x 8.94(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

John Haugeland was Professor of Philosophy at the University of Chicago.

Table of Contents

• Introduction: Toward a New Existentialism
• I. Mind
  • 1. The Nature and Plausibility of Cognitivism
  • 2. Understanding Natural Language
  • 3. Hume on Personal Identity
  
  
  
  
• II. Matter
  • 4. Analog and Analog
  • 5. Weak Supervenience
  • 6. Ontological Supervenience
  
  
  
  
• III. Meaning
  • 7. The Intentionality All-Stars
  • 8. Representational Genera
  • 9. Mind Embodied and Embedded
  
  
  
  
• IV. Truth
  • 10. Objective Perception
  • 11. Pattern & Being
  • 12. Understanding: Dennett and Searle
  • 13. Truth and Rule-Following
  
  
  
  

Editorial Reviews

Researchers and students in cognitive science and philosophy of mind will welcome this collection of 13 essays… A 'must' for any serious collection in cognitive science and philosophy of mind.

Choice - R. M. Stewart

This very readable but concise book will serve as an invaluable introduction to the philosophy of cognitive psychology from a critical perspective. It will be useful for all working in the area of cognitive psychology and neural modeling who are interested in understanding the philosophical assumptions underlying the current research activities.

South Pacific Journal of Pscyhology

Researchers and students in cognitive science and philosophy of mind will welcome this collection of 13 essays… A 'must' for any serious collection in cognitive science and philosophy of mind.
— R. M. Stewart

Choice

Bookending these mostly previously published 13 essays toward a new existentialism, the author's jacket coin art evokes the basic Kantian/Heideggerian conclusion: the constituted objective world and the free constituting subject are intelligible only as two sides of a coin. The "Mind" section fathoms understanding intelligence scientifically. "Matter" focuses on the material incarnation of the mental, while the "Meaning" essays consider representation and intentionality. The "Truth" conclusion confronts objective knowledge. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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