The Anatomy of a Minimal Mind

This thesis is entitled “The Anatomy of a Minimal Mind”. By a “minimal mind ” I mean the simplest kind of mind that could exist. As there is widespread philosophical disagreement about what a mind is, or what mental states are, I refrain from assuming at the outset that a minimal mind has to be phenomenally conscious, or subjectively aware of events in its surroundings. My objective is to identify the requirements that an organism would have to satisfy, before it could be credited with possessing a mind of any sort, however rudimentary. I then attempt to develop a detailed model of this minimal mind, using a conservative methodological approach: we should not interpret an organism's behaviour as a manifestation of underlying mental states unless doing so enables us to make better scientific predictions about its behaviour and/or explain its behaviour more fully. In section A, chapter one, I discuss the philosophical background to the contemporary discussion of minds and mental states. I defend the controversial claim that only living things can be said to have minds or mental states, and I argue that there are no convincing grounds for rejecting the common view that mental states are real phenomena. This in no way implies the mor