Introduction

The philosophy of mind is a core area of philosophy. It has roots tracing back to ancient Greece, where the idea that the soul is distinct from the body originated. Philosophy of mind flourished during much of the period from the publication in the seventeenth century of René Descartes's magnificent works on the mind to the first quarter of the twentieth century, which closed with the publication of C. D. Broad's The Mind and Its Place in Nature. With the rise of behaviourism in the second quarter of that century, however, philosophical interest in the mind waned. Still, some mid-twentieth-century work stands out. With the fall of behaviourism in the late 1950s and early 1960s and the rise of cognitive science, interest in the mind and in its place in nature was renewed - and with enormous vigour. Since then research in the philosophy of mind has been booming.