This paper explores the claim that explanation of a group's behaviour in term of individual mental states is, in principle, superior to explanation of that behaviour in terms of group mental states. We focus on the supposition that individual-level explanation is superior because it is simpler than group-level explanation. In this paper, we consider three different simplicity metrics. We argue that on none of those metrics does individual-level explanation achieve greater simplicity than a group-level alternative. We conclude that an argument against group minds should not lay weight on concerns of explanatory simplicity.

The thesis of the paper is that it is an illusion to think that the mind/body problem is one that philosophy can expect to solve. The basic reason is that the problem is one of determining the real nature of conscious states, and philosophy lacks the tools to work this out. It is argued that anti-materialist arguments in philosophy tend to rely on modal intuitions which lack any support. It is then argued that pro-materialist arguments, such as those of Smart and of Papineau, are dubious because they either yield a conclusion that is too conditional on what other types of research might discover, or rely on premises that anyone who is not already a materialist can simply query. Even if these points are correct the main thesis remains fairly speculative, but at least some support for it is presented.

Derek Parfit claims that we are not human beings. Rather, each of us is the part of a human being that thinks in the strictest sense. This is said to solve a number of difficult metaphysical problems. I argue that the view has metaphysical problems of its own, and is inconsistent with any psychological-continuity account of personal identity over time, including Parfit's own.

It is an extraordinary thing that Descartes' famous Cogito argument is still being puzzled over; this paper is another fragment in an untiring tradition of puzzlement. The paper will argue that, if I were to ask the question ‘do I have a grounds for thinking that I exist?’ the Cogito could provide for a positive answer. In particular, my aim in this is to argue, in opposition to recent discussion by John Campbell, that there is a way of construing conscious thinking on which the Cogito can be seen to provide a non-question begging argument for one's own existence.

I explain why the compositionalist conception of ordinary objects prevalent in contemporary metaphysics places the manifest image of the human self in a precarious position: the two theoretically simplest views of the existence of composites each jeopardize some central element of the manifest image. I present an alternative, nomological conception of ordinary objects, which secures the manifest image of the human self without the arbitrariness that afflicts compositionalist attempts to do the same. I close by sketching the consequences of the recommended position for the traditional personal identity debate about the nature and persistence of human selves.

What we humans call ethics or morality depends on four interlocking brain processes: (1) caring (supported by the neuroendocrine system, and emerging in the young as a function of parental care). (2) Learning local social practices and the ways of others – by positive and negative reinforcement, by imitation, by trial and error, by various kinds of conditioning, and by analogy. (3) Recognition of others' psychological states (goals, feelings etc.). (4) Problem-solving in a social context. These four broad capacities are not unique to humans, but are probably uniquely developed in human brains by virtue of the expansion of the prefrontal cortex.1

Many think John Locke's account of personal identity is inconsistent and circular. It's neither of these things. The root causes of the misreading are [i] the mistake of thinking that Locke uses ‘consciousness’ to mean memory, [ii] failure to appreciate the importance of the ‘concernment’ that always accompanies ‘consciousness’, on Locke's view, [iii] a tendency to take the term person, in Locke's text, as if it were (only) some kind of fundamental sortal term like ‘human being’ or ‘thinking thing’, and to fail to take proper account of Locke's use of it as a ‘forensic’ term (§26). It's well known that Locke uses person as a forensic term, but the consequences of this have still not been fully worked out.

Mark Johnston takes reality to be wholly objective or impersonal, and aims to show that the inevitability of death does not obliterate goodness in such a naturalistic world. Crucial to his argument is the claim that there are no persisting selves. After critically discussing Johnston's arguments, I set out a view of persons that shares Johnston's view that there are no selves, but disagrees about the prospects of goodness in a wholly impersonal world. On my view, a wholly objective world is ontologically incomplete: Persons have irreducible first-person properties. My aim is to show that we can (and should) reject selves, but that we can (and should) retain persons and their essential first-person properties as ontologically significant.

The claim that we are subjects of experience, i.e. beings whose nature is intimately bound up with consciousness, is in many ways a plausible one. There is, however, more than one way of developing a metaphysical account of the nature of subjects. The view that subjects are essentially conscious has the unfortunate consequence that subjects cannot survive periods of unconsciousness. A more appealing alternative is to hold that subjects are beings with the capacity to be conscious, a capacity which need not always be exercised. But this view can itself be developed in more than one way. The option I defend here is that subjects are nothing more than capacities for consciousness, a view I call the ‘C-theory’. Although the C-theory supplies us with a potentially appealing account of the nature of subjects (and hence ourselves), there are challenges to be overcome. Olson has argued that identifying ourselves with what are, in effect, parts of human organisms leads to a variety of intolerable problems. I suggest that these problems are by no means insuperable. Bayne and Johnston have argued that identifying subjects with experience-producing systems is confronted with a different difficulty. What if these systems can produce multiple streams of consciousness at once. Whatever else they may be, aren't subjects the kind of thing that can have just one stream of consciousness at a time? In response I argue that this is true in one sense, but not in another. Once this is appreciated, the notion that a subject could have several streams of consciousness at once no longer seems absurd, or impossible.

The setting is a garden in Elysium. The sun is shining. A rich verdant lawn is surrounded by flower beds and flowering bushes, with a grove of magnificent trees behind. Beyond, a large lake and in the distance high mountains. Five comfortable garden chairs are placed in the shade of some trees. There is a low table on which are placed a wine decanter and glasses, three of which are half full. Richard, Jill and Frank are deep in discussion.

It is often thought that as human agents we have a power to determine our actions for ourselves. And a natural conception of this power is as freedom – a power over alternatives so that we can determine for ourselves which of a variety of possible actions we perform. But what is the real content of this conception of freedom, and need self-determination take this particular form? I examine the possible forms self-determination might take, and the various ways freedom as a power over alternatives might be constituted. I argue that though ordinary ethical thought, and especially moral blame, may be committed to our possession of some capacity for self-determination, the precise nature of this power is probably ethically underdetermined – though conceptions of the nature of the power that come from outside ethics may then have important implications for ethics.

Cognitive neuroscientists frequently talk about the brain representing the world. Some philosophers claim that this is a confusion. This paper argues that there is no confusion, and outlines one thing that ‘the brain represents the world’ might mean, using the notion of a model derived from the philosophy of science. This description is then extended to make apply to propositional attitude attributions. A number of problems about propositional attitude attributions can be solved or dissolved by treating propositional attitudes as models.

(i) Is disagreement about consciousness largely owed to no adequate initial clarification of the subject, to people in fact answering different questions – despite five leading ideas of consciousness? (ii) Your being conscious in the primary ordinary sense, to sum up a wide figurative database, is initially clarified as something's being actual – clarified as actual consciousness. (iii) Philosophical method like the scientific method includes transition from the figurative to literal theory or analysis. (iv) A new theory will also satisfy various criteria not satisfied by many existing theories. (v) The objective physical world has specifiable general characteristics including spatiality, lawfulness, being in science, connections with perception, and so on. (vi) Actualism, the literal theory or analysis of actual consciousness, deriving mainly from the figurative database, is that actual consciousness has counterpart but partly different general characteristics. Actual consciousness is thus subjectively physical. So physicality in general consists in objective and also subjective physicality. (vii) Consciousness in the case of perception is only the dependent existence of a subjective external physical world out there, often a room. (viii) But cognitive and affective consciousness, various kinds of thinking and wanting, differently subjectively physical, is internal – subjectively physical representations-with-attitude, representations that also are actual. They differ from the representations that are lines of type, sounds etc. by being actual. (ix) Thus they involve a subjectivity or individuality that is a lawful unity. (x) Actualism, both an externalism and an internalism, does not impose on consciousness a flat uniformuity, and it uniquely satisfies the various criteria for an adequate theory, including naturalism. (xi) Actual consciousness is a right subject and is a necessary part of any inquiry whatever into consciousness. (xii) All of it is a subject for more science, a workplace. (xiii) There is no unique barrier or impediment whatever to science, as often said, no want of understanding of the mind-consciousness connection (Nagel), no known unique hard problem of consciousness (Chalmers), no insuperable difficulty having to do with physicality and the history of science (Chomsky), no arguable ground at all of mysterianism (McGinn).

In Mind and World, John McDowell concludes that human beings ‘are born mere animals’ and ‘are transformed into thinkers and intentional agents’, principally by their initiation into language. Such ‘transformational views’ of human development typically represent first-language learning as a movement from a non-rationally secured conformity with correct practice, through increasing understanding, to a state of rational mastery of correct practice. Accordingly, they tend to invoke something like Wittgenstein's concept of training to explain the first stage of this process. This essay considers the cogency of this view of learning and development. I agree with Sebastian Rödl that the idea of training (as developed, say, by Meredith Williams) is inadequate to the nature of infancy and child-parent interaction, and I draw on the work of Lev Vygotsky and Michael Tomasello to offer McDowell a richer picture, which acknowledges the child's active role in fostering the second-personal relations that underlie the possibility of language learning. Such considerations force us to revise the transformational view, but do not refute it outright as Rödl believes. I conclude by considering the relevance of McDowell's view of second nature to two striking ideas: Ian Hacking's suggestion that the development of autistic children is ‘non-Vygotskian’ and Derek Parfit's claim that persons are not human beings.