Books
Beyond Reduction:
Philosophy of Mind and Post-Reductionist Philosophy of Science
Oxford University Press, 2007
One of the major debates in recent philosophy of mind has been about whether mental phenomena like consciousness and intentionality can be “reduced” to physical or neural phenomena. Most philosophers have assumed that the phenomena of other special sciences (chemistry, biology) are reducible to physical phenomena. As a result, they believe either that mental phenomena must be reducible to physics as well (probably by way of psychology and neuroscience) or else that the irreducibility of the mind is something unique to the mind, and makes it either different in kind from physical things (dualism), or else an object of suspicion (eliminativism).
Curiously, during this same period, philosophers of science have fairly decisively rejected the founding assumption of this debate: the assumption that inter-theoretic reductions are widespread in the sciences. This book examines the consequences of post-reductionist philosophy of science for philosophy of mind, arguing that is creates problems for all of the familiar views of the nature of the mind. It introduces a view called Cognitive Pluralism, which may help to resolve some of the problems raised.
Symbols, Computation and Intentionality:
A Critique of the Computational Theory of Mind
University of California Press, 1996
This book examines the Computational Theory of Mind, and its claim to explain the intentionality of mental states. I argue that viewing the mind as a computer at most supplies an explanation of how reasoning can be achieved as a causal process, and cannot provide any explanation of why mental states have meaning.
(This book is out of print, but is available new or used from a number of vendors, and is now available for Kindle, Nook, and as a Google eBook. See links on left. Paperback edition will be available very soon.)
Laws, Mind, and Free Will
MIT Press, 2011
The assumption that the universe is governed by natural laws poses problems for our understanding of the mind. This book examines two of these.
First, it is often argued that, whereas the natural sciences employ strict laws, psychology and other sciences of the mind employ only ceteris paribus laws. This, in turn is seen by some as threatening both the claims of these disciplines to be truly scientific and our commitment to the reality of mental states like beliefs and desires.
Second, the existence of physical or psychological laws would seem to imperil our assumption that we have free will.
I argue that both of these views are mistaken, and that the source of the mistake is to be found in a particular philosophical account of the nature of laws, made popular by Logical Empiricists in the 20th century. This account of laws has suffered decisive criticisms within philosophy of science, and its major rival, the causal-capacities account, does not generate the same problems.
In addition to this main argument towards the dissolution of apparent problems, the book also contains an original Cognitive Pluralist account of laws and case studies in the types of law-like explanation employed in psychophysics, neural modeling and belief-desire psychology.
Reviews
Available as:
Hardcover
Paperback
-
-(coming very soon)
Digital
Kindle (Amazon)
Preview on Google Books
A first-rate contribution to the literature on the foundations of cognitive science, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of psychology. It is clear, powerfully argued, highly original, and provides one of the best general critiques to date of the claims of the advocates of the computational theory of mind.
- Jay L. Garfield, Hampshire College
A very substantial work, carefully done, directed at central issues in the foundations of cognitive science, and providing serious support for some unpopular conclusions.
- Robert Cummins, University of Arizona
[Horst's] surgical disentangling of the scientific value of CTM from its philosophical pretensions grounds an impressive, insightful, and well-supported account (consistent with, if not directly inspired by, that of Wittgenstein) of ordinary mental discourse and its relation to scientific explanation.
- John Black, Review of Metaphysics
This book is original and lucid in its argumentation, and its defense of the conventionalist analysis of symbols is detailed and comprehensive.
- Ausanio Marras, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
I highly recommend this book to anyone...interested in cognitive science and the philosophy of mind. Those readers who...are suspicious of the very wide acceptance of token physicalism and of...naturalizing the mental will find useful suggestions for further projects in many of the things that Horst suggests.
- Hans Müller, Minds & Machines
