Identity, Cause, and Mind
Identity, Cause, and Mind
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身份、原因和心灵
DOI:
10.1111/j.1468-0149.1985.tb01450.x
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发表时间:
1985
期刊:
影响因子:
--
通讯作者:
Jane Heal
中科院分区:
文献类型:
--
作者:
Jane Heal
This book contains fifteen substantial essays written by Shoemaker during the last fifteen years and their primary concern is the philosophy of mind. The views defended here exhibit considerable contrast to the “criteriological” view defended earlier by Shoemaker in Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity. Shoemaker is still convinced that there are conceptual connections between psychological and behavioural notions, but he thinks now that functionalism provides a better account of the logical shape of the link. A unifying thread in the collection is thus a concern to elucidate functionalism and to defend it against various difficulties, for example the problem posed by sensory “qualia”. And those pieces which are not directly on these matters deal with notions like property, change and identity, which provide the metaphysical underpinnings of functionalism. Some of the essays are already well known. For example there is “Persons and their pasts” which introduces the notion of “quasi memory” and examines how views about personal identity and memory would have to be modified in the light of fusing or dividing persons. Another familiar piece is the admirably ingenious “Time without change”. It is good to have these available here.Of the more recent papers “Some varieties of functionalism” sets out a useful distinction between ways in which physical properties may be said to “realise” psychological properties. Suppose that a functional style of account of pain is correct. Then for a creature to be in pain will be for it to have a property, say 9, which stands in the defining causal relations with inputs, outputs and other properties. Now do we say that what realises the psychological property of suffering pain is 9, by itself, or do we say that it is the property of having 9 and being such that 9 plays a