Embodied Minds in Action

In Embodied Minds in Action, Robert Hanna and Michelle Maiese work out a unified treatment of three fundamental philosophical problems: the mind-body problem, the problem of mental causation, and the problem of action. This unified treatment rests on two basic claims. The first is that conscious, intentional minds like ours are essentially embodied. This entails that our minds are necessarily spread throughout our living, organismic bodies and belong to their complete neurobiological constitution. So minds like ours are necessarily alive. The second claim is that essentially embodied minds are self-organizing thermodynamic systems. This entails that our mental lives consist in the possibility and actuality of moving our own living organismic bodies through space and time, by means of our conscious desires. The upshot is that we are essentially minded animals who help to create the natural world through our own agency. This doctrine--the Essential Embodiment Theory--is a truly radical idea which subverts the traditionally opposed and seemingly exhaustive categories of Dualism and Materialism, and offers a new paradigm for contemporary mainstream research in the philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience.

Robert Hanna is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He is the author of Kant and the Foundations of Analytic Philosophy (OUP, 2001), Kant, Science, and Human Nature (OUP, 2006), and Rationality and Logic (MIT, 2006).
Michelle Maiese is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Emmanuel College, Boston. Her research focuses on issues in philosophy of mind, philosophy of action, and the emotions.

Preface and Acknowledgments	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
Consciousnesslo and Essential Embodiment I: The Basics	p. 19
Introduction	p. 19
Some Preliminaries	p. 22
The Nature of Consciousnesslo	p. 28
Essential Embodiment and the Cartesian Mistakes	p. 50
Consciousnesslo and Essential Embodiment II: Types and Structures	p. 59
Introduction	p. 59
Ten Types of Consciousnesslo	p. 60
Eight Structures of Consciousnesslo	p. 73
Affectivity, Egocentricity, Spatiality, and Temporality	p. 76
Embodiment, Intentionalitylo, Focus, and Intensity	p. 87
Essentially Embodied Agency I: Actions, Causes, and Reasons	p. 101
Introduction	p. 101
Classical Causal Theories of Action, and Beyond	p. 103
Against Davidson 1: Reasons are Epiphenomenal	p. 112
Against Davidson 2: Reasons are Insufficient for Actions	p. 116
Against Davidson 3: Actions without Reasons	p. 126
Against Davidson 4: Deviant Causal Chains Again	p. 153
Essentially Embodied Agency II: Guidance and Trying	p. 159
Introduction	p. 159
Towards a Non-Classical Causal Theory 1: Active Guidance	p. 160
Towards a Non-Classical Causal Theory 2: Effortless Trying	p. 175
Is Trying an Epiphenomenal Illusion? No.	p. 190
Essentially Embodied Agency III: Emotive Causation	p. 195
Introduction	p. 195
Essentially Embodied Agency and the Emotions	p. 197
What is an Emotion?	p. 203
The Intentionalitylo of Desire-Based Emotions	p. 223
Invasion of the Body Snatchers: Emotional Self-Control and Emotional Zeroes	p. 238
The Metaphysics of Agency I: The Problem of Mental Causation	p. 255
Introduction	p. 255
Some Preliminaries about Causation	p. 257
The Amazingly Hard Problem	p. 271
Good Reasons for Efficacy, Closure, Physicality, and Irreducibility	p. 272
The Causal Exclusion Problems	p. 286
The Metaphysics of Agency II: And How to Solve It	p. 295
Introduction	p. 295
From Causal Exclusion to Property Fusion	p. 298
The Dynamic World	p. 313
Dynamic Systems Theory	p. 323
Strong Metaphysical A Priori Necessity	p. 328
The Metaphysics of Agency III: Where the Action Is	p. 341
Introduction	p. 341
Mind-Body Animalism	p. 343
Dynamic Emergence	p. 356
Arm-Raising vs. Arm-Rising: Trying as Structuring Causation	p. 370
Bibliography	p. 387
Index	p. 405
Table of Contents provided by Ingram. All Rights Reserved.

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Embodied Minds in Action

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Author Biography

Table of Contents

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