Complexity and the function of mind in nature
This book is a further contribution to the series Cambridge Studies in Philosophy and Biology. It is an ambitious attempt to explain the relationship between intelligence and environmental complexity, and in so doing to link philosophy of mind to more general issues about the relations between organisms and environments, and to the general pattern of "externalist" explanations. Two sets of questions drive the argument. First, is it possible to develop an informative philosophical theory about the mind by linking it to properties of environmental complexity? Second, what is the nature of externalist patterns of explanation? What is at stake in attempting to understand the internal in terms of the external?
xiii, 311 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
9780521451666, 9780521646246, 0521451663, 0521646243
32468942
1. Naturalism and teleology
2. Externalism and internalism
3. Spencer's version
4. Dewey's version
5. On construction
6. The question of correspondence
7. Adaptive plasticity
8. The signal detection model
9. Complex individuals, complex populations