Matter, Nature, Mind

January 31, 2005 Books in the philosophy of mind

fragments of consciousness a weblog by david chalmers

There have been recent discussions on other weblogs of the last century's five most important books in epistemology and ten most important books in the philosophy of biology (also here and here). Being something of a listmaniac, I couldn't help starting to think about a similar list in the philosophy of mind. What's surprising was how hard it was. By my lights, three books select themselves:

1. Broad's The Mind and its Place in Nature (1925),
2. Ryle's The Concept of Mind (1949), and
3. Armstrong's A Materialist Theory of the Mind (1968).

But it's hard to think of others that stand alongside these. Maybe Sellars' Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind (1953) and Feigl's The "Mental" and the "Physical" (1958) count retrospectively, although neither was a book at the time. One could make a case for Price's Perception (1932) and just maybe something by Russell (The Analysis of Mind?) or Wittgenstein (the Investigations?). One should probably include something by Husserl (but which book?), and some would include Merleau-Ponty's The Phenomenology of Perception (1945) and/or Sartre's Being and Nothingness (1943). But no book from the last thirty years or so seems to quite stand alongside the first three, although of course there could be illusions of perspective.

So to make it easier, I then lowered the standards and considered the ten most important books in the philosophy of mind from the last thirty years. It wasn't too hard to come up with a first pass at a list: Fodor's The Language of Thought (1975), Jackson's Perception (1977), Dennett's Brainstorms (1978), Churchland's Scientific Realism and the Plasticity of Mind (1979), Dretske's Knowledge and the Flow of Information (1981), Kripke's Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language (1982), Searle's Intentionality (1983), Millikan's Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories (1983), Fodor's Psychosemantics (1987), and Dennett's The Intentional Stance (1987).

I see there's nothing there from the last 15 years, because that's just too close. But anyway, I'm sure that I've overlooked a number of books and that a better list is possible. So I hereby throw open the listmaking to all-comers. People are welcome to contribute to either question: most important of the last 100 years, and of the last 30 years. Feel free to include books from the last 15 years if you like (but I stipulate that no book by an author of this weblog is eligible). January 31, 2005 in Books, Philosophy of Mind Permalink