ABSTRACT
This book is devoted to introducing basic issues in philosophy of mind to the practitioners of other disciplines of cognitive science: cognitive psychology, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, theoretical linguistics, and cognitive anthropology. Philosophers were interested in the character of the mind long before these empirical disciplines arose. They asked such questions as: What are the distinctive features of minds? How should mental states be characterized? How are minds related to physical bodies? How are minds able to learn about the physical world? A variety of answers that philosophers have offered to these and other questions are examined in the subsequent chapters of this book. Before turning to the particular views philosophers have advanced, however, it is useful to put philosophical investigations of these issues into perspective.
