Braddon - Mitchell , D . , & Jackson , F . ( 2007 ) . Philosophy of Mind and Cognition , an Introduction . Victoria ( Australia ) : Blackwell Action editor : Stefan Wermter

David Braddon-Mitchell’s and Frank Jackson’s Philosophy of mind and cognition is written as an introductory textbook. Philosophy, of course, is not the actual study of the subject. The book, then, does not report factual data about the mind and the mind’s ability to acquire knowledge by processes like perception and reasoning, and it neither tells about specific research methods that could be used to learn more about the mind and its processes. The book introduces in understandable language some schools of thought that have dominated the philosophical debate about the mind for the last decennia. In their discussions the authors make also clear to which school they feel allied to, namely common-sense functionalism. ‘Common’ refers to what we have in common; what everyday individuals assume and think. ‘Sense’ refers to good judgment. ‘Functionalism’ is the theory that analysis and explains a thing, in this case the human mind, according to the function it performs. There are different components recognized in a structure, and functionalists are interested which function each component fulfills. They are, however, not interested how the component fulfills its function. Common-sense functionalism, then, is the research project that analyses and explains the mind by starting with the terms that are used in regular, day-to-day speech to say something about the working of the human mind. Two approaches are widely used to introduce the philosophy of mind. One approach is historical; we are given a sketch of the views of some of the great scholars of the past. The good side of this approach is that the reader hears about concepts that have been used in the past; also concepts that are ignored today but still could be valuable.