Description
This text provides an introduction to a cluster of contemporary controversies in the area of the philosophy of mind and language. Since Descartes, the mind has been thought to be in the head , separable from the world and even from the body it inhabits. Here, the author considers the latest debates in philosophy and cognitive science about whether the thinking subject actually requires an environment in order to be able to think. He explores the argument from Descartes, through Locke, Frege and Wittgenstein up to the present day. He then offers an original defence of his own version of externalism - that the mind is constituted by the objects which are its phenomena. Review: This is a first-rate book. It is a very important insight that we make almost no headway with the problems Descartes left to the philosophy of mind simply by rejecting his immaterialism; and McCulloch's defense of externalism is sophisticated and convicing. -John McDowell, University of Pittsburgh
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