293 content are not, to put it mildly, exactly what Searle or the Churchlands have in mind when arguing that philosophy of mind has lost touch in a damaging way with neurobiology. Dretske and Millikan accept neither the revisionist/eliminativist approach of the Churchlands nor the apparent biological essentialism of Searle. Though I would not hesitate to recommend this volume as part of an introduction to important work in philosophy of mind, I would, for at least these reasons, recommend it as only part of such an introduction. A stronger recommendation can be given to the volume if it is being considered for the task for which it was intended, as an introduction to recent work in cognitive science and in the philosophies of mind and language. The volume certainly would make an outstanding introduction to this broad set of topics, useful to both advanced students and professionals from one of the three disciplines presented in the volume wishing to explore connections with the other two. References Stich, S. and Warfield, T. A., eds. (1994), Mental Representation, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.

Department of Philosophy, The University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN 46556, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected]

TED A. WARFIELD

George Graham, Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1993, ix + 204 pp., $20.95 (paper), ISBN 0-631-17956-9. In his preface, George Graham writes that his book tries to make the main ideas of the subject available to readers with little or no exposure to philosophy. It is primarily intended for undergraduate students and the inquisitive general reader. (p. vii). Having often read words to this effect, usually with well-warranted skepticism, I happily find that Graham not only really tries but really succeeds as well. He writes briskly, gracefully, and straightforwardly, with memorable conceits (for example, Chapter 2, “Life After Death”, comes in five sections, titled “Christianity and the Problem of Survival”, “The After-Death Experience”, “Dissent from After Death”, “Glorifying the Afterlife”, and “Solace and Annihilation”; and Chapter 7, “Does Mind Depend Upon Brain?”, sports a section titled “Supervenience and Melancholia or Why Did Robert Schumann Starve Himself to Death?”). As he also writes, the book consists of nine relatively independent chapters, so an instructor might have his/her class read only some of them and might vary the order in which they are read, perhaps also assigning some of the journal articles or book chapters that

294 are cited or seem relevant. While Graham indeed does mostly “cover the main ideas of the subject”, much of the interest in his book is in the ideas that the subject evokes for the uninitiated but that are skirted in many treatments (as the section headings listed above may suggest). As Descartes’s Meditations suggests, and subsequent empiricist and rationalist treatments as well, a natural interest, when one thinks about one’s mind, is whether it might survive the death of one’s body. Wisely, I think, Graham puts this question up early on, and his discussion is frank, sophisticated, modern, and judicious, with enough traditional Christian theology to ground the discussion historically and enough humanist thinking to thoroughly counterpoint it (a few chapters later, Graham makes it clear that he is not a Christian, but he certainly deploys an insightful grasp of its relevance: The question as to whether computers can have beliefs is usefully contrasted with the question as to whether God can have beliefs). Aside from the usual chapters on materialism, supervenience, and intentionality, on the Turing test and the Chinese room, on personhood, free will, and on other minds, Graham also discusses belief in animals, rational action, weakness of will, altruism, consciousness, and morality. Written in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the book seems still quite up to date, though there is no discussion of connectionism and very little about traditional AI as well, and the “suggested reading” section stops around 1991 (easy enough to add a few more suggestions, and indeed Graham suggests Bechtel and Abrahamsen’s book, Connectionism and the Mind (1990). It is inevitable, given Graham’s intended audience, that he must occasionally appear to oversimplify and to overplay his hand (all the better for initiating spirited further discussion). I felt, in reading the book straight through, that the serial order was important and that the chapters were interdependent in ways that dubiously abetted some of Graham’s arguments. Early on, Graham has a chapter about whether (non-human) animals have beliefs (i.e., minds), and he finds it fairly easy to conclude that many animals do; only much later are we told, à la “what is it like to be . . . ?”, that we can never possibly know anything whatsoever about the character of animal’s mental lives, which rather calls into question the earlier claim that they surely have minds. Questions as to whether computers have beliefs (i.e., minds) are raised later, along with the Turing test, Chinese room, and “intrinsic” (real) intentionality, but now the standard for establishing beliefs and minds is clearly raised far beyond anything set the animals. As I have argued in my dialogue, Can Animals and Machines Be Persons?, and Daniel Dennett in a number of venues (Dennett 1990ab, etc.), questions about functional, mentalist, and intentional ascriptions to animals, artifacts, and humans should be discussed together and played off against each other. This is a superb introductory text.

295 References Bechtel, W. and Abrahamsen, A. (1990), Connectionism and the Mind: An Introduction to Parallel Processing in Networks, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. Dennett, D. (1990a), ‘The Interpretation of Texts, People, and Other Artifacts’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 50, pp. 177–194. Dennett, D. (1990b), ‘Memes and the Exploitation of the Imagination’, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 48, pp. 127–135. Leiber, J. (1985), Can Animals and Machines Be Persons?: A Dialogue, Indianapolis: Hackett.

Department of Philosophy, University of Houston, Houston, TX 77004, U.S.A. E-mail: [email protected]

JUSTIN LEIBER

David Braddon-Mitchell and Frank Jackson, The Philosophy of Mind and Cognition, Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1996, xiii + 293 pp., $22.95 (paper), ISBN 0631-19168-2. The Philosophy of Mind and Cognition has two purposes: as a textbook for a first course in the philosophy of mind (either at the advanced undergraduate or the first-year graduate level) and as a vehicle for the authors to argue in favor of their version of functionalism. The book is quite comprehensive, covering most of the major positions taken by philosophers of mind over the last 25 years or so. Along the way, the authors pursue the partisan goal of convincing the reader that their position (commonsense functionalism with non-linguistically-structured mental states) is currently the best straw afloat within the philosophy of mind. Given the dual purpose served by the book, this review must be broken into two parts: The first deals with the book’s merits as a textbook, while the second deals with the success of the authors in mounting a tenable defense of commonsense functionalism. 1. As a textbook for a first course in the philosophy of mind, The Philosophy of Mind and Cognition is moderately successful. On the one hand, the book covers an extraordinary number of topics in its brief 266 pages. The authors review the recent history of philosophy of mind leading up to functionalism, and devote several chapters to a detailed discussion of the types of functionalism and to their relative strengths and weaknesses. Next, Braddon-Mitchell and Jackson consider arguments for and against the language-of-thought hypothesis and its main contender (the“map alternative”); they also discuss several difficulties associated with the naturalization of psychological content. The final part of The Philosophy of