A REVISED AGENDA FOR PHILOSOPHY OF MIND (AND BRAIN)

It is my intention in this article to set forth the case for revision of the topics considered central in the philosophy of mind and to reorient that agenda toward concepts that are more present in current research in psychology and neuroscience. In my view the philosophy of mind should be a subject like the philosophy of physics, dominated in many ways by scientific findings, in this case, in psychology and neuroscience about the nature of the mental. This does not mean there is no room for philosophy left. Rather, its role is changed to the workman-like job of building a conceptual foundation for the scientific results. The building of such a foundation is itself as much scientific as philosophical. What marks it as philosophical is the emphasis on a certain range of concepts, some of which may remain controversial and will not be clarified for some decades by proper theoretical and empirical scientific findings. I have divided this revised agenda into three parts. The first one deals with computation, perhaps the subject most missing from current philosophical theories of mind. Part two focuses on representation. For reasons that are set forth later, the concentration is on brain rather than mental representations. Finally, the ever present an