ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the separate challenges to major positions in philosophy of mind, making it clear which positions are endangered by them. Philosophy of mind is the discipline that explores the relationship between mental and physical phenomena. In philosophy of mind, reductionism therefore amounts to the position that mental phenomena are most fully and accurately described in terms of more basic sciences, such as biology, neuroscience, or physics. The knowledge argument, introduced by Frank Jackson, turns on a thought experiment. Yet the hard problem, and arguments pointing toward it such as the knowledge argument, remains a crucial challenge with which any physicalist theory of mind must contend. Second, each is an exciting and growing research program in the philosophy of mind. Physicalism attained near-total dominance in the early 20th century, in large part due to the success of the sciences and, later, the cognitive sciences.
