Rear-view mirrors are not normal scientific equipment, nor are philosophers all that keen to recall a partly embarrassing past. But looking back can cure a self-induced narrowing of the modern scientific mind and help us to renew a sense of where, if anywhere, we might feel we belong in the world. Today, a centuries-long belief in the primacy of a first-personal perspective has given way to an opposite view that what passes through the conscious mind has little to do with who we are and what we are doing. A lifelong campaigner for the first-personal perspective, Alastair Hannay presents here a powerful and historically framed case for restoring faith in its status as a provider of important truths about ourselves.

This book explores how predictive processing, which argues that our brains are constantly generating and updating hypotheses about our external conditions, sheds new light on the nature of the mind. It shows how it is similar to and expands other theoretical approaches that emphasize the active role of the mind and its dynamic function. Offering a complete guide to the philosophical and empirical implications of predictive processing, contributors bring perspectives from philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology. Together, they explore the many philosophical applications of predictive processing and its exciting potential across mental health, cognitive science, neuroscience, and robotics. Presenting an extensive and balanced overview of the subject, The Philosophy and Science of Predictive Processing is a landmark volume within philosophy of mind.

Best known for his groundbreaking and influential work in Buddhist philosophy, Mark Siderits is the pioneer of "fusion" or "confluence philosophy", a boldly systematic approach to doing philosophy premised on the idea that rational reconstruction of positions in one tradition in light of another can sometimes help address perennial problems and often lead to new and valuable insights. Exemplifying the many virtues of the confluence approach, this collection of essays covers all core areas of Buddhist philosophy, as well as topics and disputes in contemporary Western philosophy relevant to its study. They consider in particular the ways in which questions concerning personal identity figure in debates about agency, cognition, causality, ontological foundations, foundational truths, and moral cultivation. Most of these essays engage Siderits' work directly, building on his pathbreaking ideas and interpretations. Many deal with issues that have become a common staple in philosophical engagements with traditions outside the West. Their variety and breadth bear testimony to the legacy of Siderits' impact in shaping the contemporary conversation in Buddhist philosophy and its reverberations in mainstream philosophy, giving readers a clear sense of the remarkable scope of his work.

Much of what is said about yoga is misleading. To take two examples, it is neither five thousand years old, as is commonly claimed, nor does it mean union, at least not exclusively. In perhaps the most famous text-The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali-the aim is separation, isolating consciousness from everything else. And the earliest evidence of practice dates back about twenty-five hundred years. Yoga may well be older, but no one can prove it. Scholars have learned a lot more about the history of yoga in recent years, but their research can be hard to track down. Although their work is insightful, it is aimed more at specialists than at general readers. Daniel Simpson's The Truth of Yoga draws on many of their findings, presented in a format designed for practitioners. The aim is to highlight ideas on which readers can draw to keep traditions alive in the twenty-first century. It offers an overview of yoga's evolution from its earliest origins to the present. It can either be read chronologically or be used as a reference guide to history and philosophy. Each short section addresses one element, quoting from traditional texts and putting their teachings into context. The intention is to keep things clear without oversimplifying.

What happens in our unconscious minds when we listen to, produce or perform popular music? The Unconscious - a much misunderstood concept from philosophy and psychology - works through human subjects as we produce music and can be traced through the music we engage with. Through a new collaboration between music theorist and philosopher, Smith and Overy present the long history of the unconscious and its related concepts, working systematically through philosophers such as Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, psychoanalysts such as Freud and Lacan, to theorists such as Deleuze and Kristeva. The theories offered are vital to follow the psychological complexity of popular music, demonstrated through close readings of individual songs, albums, artists, genres, and popular music practices. Among countless artists, Listening to the Unconscious draws from Prince to Sufjan Stevens, from Robyn to Xiu Xiu, from Joanna Newsom to Arcade Fire, from PJ Harvey to LCD Sound System, each of whom offer exciting inroads into the fascinating worlds of our unconscious musical minds. And in return, theories of the unconscious can perhaps takes us deeper into the heart of popular music.

How do we understand memory in the early novel? Departing from traditional empiricist conceptualizations of remembering, Mind over Matter uncovers a social model of memory in Enlightenment fiction that is fluid and evolving - one that has the capacity to alter personal histories. Memories are not merely imprints of first-hand experience stored in the mind, but composite stories transacted through dialogue and reading.Through new readings of works by Daniel Defoe, Frances Burney, Laurence Sterne, Jane Austen, and others, Sarah Eron tracks the fictional qualities of memory as a force that, much like the Romantic imagination, transposes time and alters forms. From Crusoe's island and Toby's bowling green to Evelina's garden and Fanny's east room, memory can alter, reconstitute, and even overcome the conditions of the physical environment. Memory shapes the process and outcome of the novel's imaginative world-making, drafting new realities to better endure trauma and crises. Bringing together philosophy of mind, formalism, and narrative theory, Eron highlights how eighteenth-century novelists explored remembering as a creative and curative force for literary characters and readers alike. If memory is where we fictionalize reality, fiction--and especially the novel--is where the truths of memory can be found.

This book aims to enrich our understanding of the role the environment plays in processes of life and cognition, from the perspective of enactive cognitive science. Miguel A. Sepulveda-Pedro offers an unprecedented interpretation of the central claims of the enactive approach to cognition, supported by contemporary works of ecological psychology and phenomenology. The enactive approach conceives cognition as sense-making, a phenomenon emerging from the organizational nature of the living body that evolves in human beings through sensorimotor, intercorporeal, and linguistic interactions with the environment. From this standpoint, Sepulveda-Pedro suggests incorporating three new theses into the theoretical body of the enactive approach: sense-making and cognition fundamentally consist of processes of norm development; the environment, cognitive agents actually interact with, is an active ecological field enacted in their historical past; and sense-making occurs in a domain consisting of multiple normative dimensions that the author names enactive place.

The topic of this book is mental representation, a theoretical concept that lies at the core of cognitive science. Together with the idea that thinking is analogous to computational processing, this concept is responsible for the "cognitive turn" in the sciences of the mind and brain since the 1950s. Conceiving of cognitive processes (such as perception, reasoning, and motor control) as consisting of the manipulation of contentful vehicles that represent the world has led to tremendous empirical advancements in our explanations of behaviour. Perhaps the most famous discovery that explains behavior by appealing to the notion of mental representations was the discovery of 'place' cells that underlie spatial navigation and positioning, which earned researchers John O'Keefe, May-Britt Moser, and Edvard I. Moser a joint Nobel Prize in 2014. And yet, despite the empirical importance of the concept, there is no agreed definition or theoretical understanding of mental representation. This book constitutes a state-of-the-art overview on the topic of mental representation, assembling some of the leading experts in the field and allowing them to engage in meaningful exchanges over some of the most contentious questions. The collection gathers both proponents and critics of the notion, making room for debates dealing with the theoretical and ontological status of representations, the possibility of formulating a general account of mental representation which would fit our best explanatory practices, and the possibility of delivering such an account in fully naturalistic terms. Some contributors explore the relation between mutually incompatible notions of mental representation, stemming from the different disciplines composing the cognitive sciences (such as neuroscience, psychology, and computer science). Others question the ontological status and explanatory usefulness of the notion. And finally, some try to sketch a general theory of mental representations that could face the challenges outlined in the more critical chapters of the volume.