Fall 2025

Analia Saban, Perceptron, 2024.

Details

Instructor

Overview

This class is an introduction to philosophy of mind. No prior philosophy, psychology or neuroscience will be assumed.

Assessment

The final grade will be determined approximately as follows:

Assessment dates:

Policies

Lateness and Attendance

Students are required to attend all classes on time. Lateness will count against your attendance and participation grade. Students missing 4 classes will receive an attendance and participation grade of F. Students missing 6 classes will receive a final grade of F.

Integrity

It is a condition on passing this course that students read and adhere to the NYU Shanghai policy on academic integrity as described in the current NYU Shanghai Academic Bulletin.

Course Materials

All notes, readings and assignments can be found here.

The following books have been placed on reserve in the library:

• Kim, Jaegwon. 2010. Philosophy of Mind, Westview Press, Boulder CO.
• Chalmers, David J. 2002. Philosophy of Mind: Classical and Contemporary Readings, Oxford University Press, Oxford.

Schedule

Meeting 1: Introductory Discussion (Tuesday 2 September)

Meeting 2: The Mark of the Mental (Thursday 4 September)

Primary Reading

• Bayne, Tim. 2021. Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction, Routledge, New York. URI: https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003225348, Chapter 1, pp. 6–23.

Secondary Reading

• Crane, Tim. 1998. “Intentionality as the Mark of the Mental”, in O’Hear (Ed), Current Issues in Philosophy of Mind, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Vol. 43, pp. 229–252. URI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S1358246100004380.
• Strawson, Galen. 2010. Mental Reality, MIT Press, Cambridge MA. URI: https://doi.org/10.7551/mitpress/9780262513104.001.0001, Chapter 6, pp. 145–176.

Meeting 3: Dualism: Epistemological Arguments (Tuesday 9 September)

Primary Reading

• Descartes, René. 1984. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Vol. 2, Meditations II and VI, pp. 16–23, 50–62.
• Braddon-Mitchell, David and Jackson, Frank. 2007. The Philosophy of Mind and Cognition: An Introduction, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 5–8.

Secondary Reading

• Wilson, Margaret D. 1976. “Descartes: The Epistemological Argument for Mind-Body Distinctness”, in Noûs, Vol. 10, No. 1, March, pp. 3–15. URI: http://doi.org/10.2307/2214469.

Meeting 4: Dualism: The Problem of Interaction (Thursday 11 September)

Primary Reading

• Descartes, René. 1985. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, Vol. 1, The Passions of The Soul, §§30-34, pp. 339–341.
• Shapiro, Lisa. 2007. The Correspondence between Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and René Descartes, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. URI: https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226204444.001.0001, pp. 61-73.

Secondary Reading

• Garber, Daniel. 1983. “Understanding Interaction: What Descartes Should Have Told Elisabeth”, in Southern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 21, No. S1, pp. 15–32. URI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2041-6962.1983.tb01534.x.

Meeting 5: Dualism: The Pairing Problem (Tuesday 16 September)

Primary Reading

• Kim, Jaegwon. 2001. “Lonely Souls: Causality and Substance Dualism”, in Corcoran (Ed), Soul, Body, and Survival, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, pp. 30–43.

Secondary Reading

• Strawson, Peter. [1966] 2008. “Self, Mind and Body”, in Freedom and Resentment and Other Essays, Routledge, London, pp. 186–195.

Meeting 6: Review (Thursday 18 September)

Meeting 7: Behaviour and Knowledge of Minds I (Tuesday 23 September)

Primary Reading

• Ryle, Gilbert. 1949. The Concept of Mind, Hutchinson, London, Chapter 1, pp. 1–13.

Secondary Reading

• Tanney, Julia. 2009. “Rethinking Ryle: A Critical Discussion of The Concept of Mind”, in The Concept of Mind, Hutchinson, London, pp. ix-lvii.

Meeting 8: Behaviour and Knowledge of Minds II (Thursday 25 September)

Primary Reading

• Paul, Sarah K. 2018. “John Doe and Richard Roe”, in Rosen, Byrne, Cohen, Harman and Shiffrin (Ed), The Norton Introduction to Philosophy, W. W. Norton, New York, pp. 241–248.

Secondary Reading

• Carruthers, Peter. 2009. “Mindreading Underlies Metacognition”, in Behavioral and Brain Sciences, Vol. 32, No. 2, April, pp. 164–182. URI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X09000831.

National Day Holiday/Mid-Autumn Festival

Meeting 9: Behaviourism (Tuesday 7 October)

Primary Reading

• Kim, Jaegwon. 2010. Philosophy of Mind, Westview Press, Boulder CO, Chapter 3, pp. 61–90.

Secondary Reading

• Crawford, Sean. 2013. “The Myth of Logical Behaviourism and the Origins of the Identity Theory”, in Beaney (Ed), The Oxford Handbook of The History of Analytic Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp. 621–655. URI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199238842.013.0032.

Meeting 10: The Identity Theory I (Thursday 9 October)

Primary Reading

• Place, Ullin T. 1956. “Is Consciousness a Brain Process?”, in British Journal of Psychology, Vol. 47, No. 1, February, pp. 44–50. URI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-8295.1956.tb00560.x.
• Smart, J. J. C. 1959. “Sensations and Brain Processes”, in The Philosophical Review, Vol. 68, No. 2, April, pp. 141–156. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2182164.

Meeting 11: The Identity Theory II (Tuesday 14 October)

Primary Reading

• Lewis, David. 1966. “An Argument for the Identity Theory”, in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 63, No. 1, January, pp. 17–25. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2024524.

Secondary Reading

• Lewis, David. 1972. “Psychophysical and Theoretical Identifications”, in Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 50, No. 3, December, pp. 249–258. URI: http://doi.org/10.1080/00048407212341301.

Meeting 12: Review (Thursday 16 October)

Meeting 13: The Identity Theory III (Tuesday 21 October)

Primary Reading

• Nagel, Thomas. 1974. “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?”, in The Philosophical Review, Vol. 83, No. 4, October, pp. 435–450. URI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/2183914.

Secondary Reading

• Akins, Kathleen. 1993. “A Bat Without Qualities?”, in Davies and Humphreys (Ed), Consciousness: Psychological and Philosophical Essays, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 258–273.
• Akins, Kathleen. 1993. “What Is It Like to Be Boring and Myopic?”, in Dahlbom (Ed), Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind, Blackwell, Oxford, pp. 124–160.

Meeting 14: Functionalism I (Thursday 23 October)

Primary Reading

• Putnam, Hilary. 1967. “Psychological Predicates”, in Capitan and Merrill (Ed), Art, Mind, and Religion, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, pp. 37–48. Reprinted as “The Nature of Mental States” in Timothy O'Connor and David Robb, Philosophy of Mind: Contemporary Readings, Routledge, London, pp. 210–221.
• Lewis, David. [1969] 1980. “Review of Putnam”, in Block (Ed), Readings in Philosophy of Psychology, Harvard University Press, Cambridge MA, Vol. 1, pp. 232–233.

Secondary Reading

• Polger, Thomas W. 2009. “Evaluating the Evidence for Multiple Realization”, in Synthese, Vol. 167, No. 3, April, pp. 457–472. URI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-008-9386-7.

Meeting 15: Functionalism II (Tuesday 28 October)

Primary Reading

• Fodor, Jerry A. 1981. “The Mind-Body Problem”, in Scientific American, Vol. 244, No. 1, January, pp. 114–123. URI: https://doi.org/10.1038/scientificamerican0181-114.

Meeting 16: Writing a Philosophy Paper (Thursday 30 October)

Primary Reading

• Jim Pryor, Guidelines on Writing a Philosophy Paper, 2012.

Meeting 17: Functionalism and Consciousness I (Tuesday 4 November)

Primary Reading

• Block, Ned. 1978. “Troubles with Functionalism”, in Savage (Ed), Perception and Cognition: Issues in the Foundations of Psychology, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, Vol. 9, pp. 261–326. Revised version published in Brian Beakley and Peter Ludlow, The Philosophy of Mind: Classical Problems/Contemporary Issues, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, 2nd Ed, 2006, pp. 107–131.

No Meetings Thursday 6 November and Sunday 9 November

Meeting 18: Functionalism and Consciousness II (Tuesday 11 November)

Primary Reading

• Chalmers, David J. 1995. “Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia”, in Metzinger (Ed), Conscious Experience, Imprint Academic, Schöningh, pp. 309–328.

Meeting 19: Propositional Attitudes: Eliminativism (Thursday 13 November)

Primary Reading

• Churchland, Paul M. 1981. “Eliminative Materialism and the Propositional Attitudes”, in The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 78, No. 2, February, pp. 67–90. URI: https://doi.org/10.2307/2025900.

Meeting 20: Propositional Attitudes: Representationalism I (Tuesday 18 November)

Primary Reading

• Fodor, Jerry A. 1978. “Propositional Attitudes”, in The Monist, Vol. 61, No. 4, October, pp. 501–523. URI: https://doi.org/10.5840/monist197861444.

Meeting 21: Propositional Attitudes: Dispositionalism (Thursday 20 November)

Primary Reading

• Schwitzgebel, Eric. 2013. “A Dispositional Approach to Attitudes: Thinking Outside of the Belief Box”, in Nottelmann (Ed), New Essays on Belief: Constitution, Content and Structure, Palgrave Macmillan, London, pp. 75–99. URI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137026521_5.

Meeting 22: Propositional Attitudes: Representationalism II (Tuesday 25 November)

Primary Reading

• Quilty-Dunn, Jake and Mandelbaum, Eric. 2018. “Against Dispositionalism: Belief in Cognitive Science”, in Philosophical Studies, Vol. 175, No. 9, September, pp. 2353–2372. URI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0962-x.

Secondary Reading

• Pautz, Adam. 2021. “An Argument Against Fodorian Inner Sentence Theories of Belief and Desire”. Unpublished manuscript. URI: https://philarchive.org/rec/PAUAAA-10.
• Crane, Tim and Farkas, Katalin. 2023. “The Limits of the Doxastic”, in Kriegel (Ed), Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind, Oxford University Press, Oxford, Vol. 3, pp. 36–57. URI: https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192856685.003.0002.

Thanksgiving

Meeting 23: Animal Thought I (Tuesday 2 December)

Primary Reading

• Cheney, Dorothy L. and Seyfarth, Robert M. 2007. Baboon Metaphysics: The Evolution of a Social Mind, University of Chicago Press, Chicago. URI: https://doi.org/10.7208/9780226102429, Chapter 11, pp. 248–272.

Meeting 24: Review (Thursday 4 December)

Meeting 25: Animal Thought II (Tuesday 9 December)

Primary Reading

• Camp, Elisabeth. 2009. “A Language of Baboon Thought?”, in Lurz (Ed), The Philosophy of Animal Minds, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 108–127. URI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511819001.007.

Meeting 26: Final Discussion (Thursday 11 December)

Updated: 6 October 2025