invitation to a philosophy talk

The CEU Philosophy Department cordially invites you to a talk (as part of its Departmental Colloquium series) by Gerard O'Brien (University of Adelaide) on How Does Mind Matter? Tuesday, 21 October 2008, 5.30 PM, Zrinyi 14, Room 412 ABSTRACT Nothing could be more obvious than that minds matter. Specifically, nothing could be more obvious than that mental phenomena-beliefs, desires, thoughts, perceptions, and so forth-have a causal impact on behaviour. Yet it has proved notoriously difficult to explain how this can be so. The problem of “mental causation” takes a number of forms in the philosophy of mind. One of these arises from the conjunction of two widely accepted theses about the mind. The first is that representation is the mark of the mental: that mental phenomena are essentially contentful. The second is that the representational properties of mental phenomena fail to supervene on the intrinsic physical properties of states of the brain. The standard response to this form of the problem has been to accept that representational properties are causally inert, but to argue that there is enough room between explanation and causation for representational properties to be “explanatorily relevant”. In their heart of hearts, however, most philosophers know this response is deeply unsatisfactory, and this discontent has motivated a flirtation in the contemporary philosophy of mind with “extended mind” hypotheses and even forms of “anti-representationalism”. In this paper I will present a simple solution to this construal of the problem of mental causation. Rather than toying with ways of redrawing the boundaries of the mind or abandoning representation completely, I will develop an account of mental representation according to which representational content supervenes on the intrinsic physical properties of states of the brain. Kriszta Biber Department Coordinator Philosophy Department Tel: 36-1-327-3806 Fax: 36-1-327-3072 E-mail: biberk(a)ceu.hu