Collected Papers, Volume 1 Mind and Language, 1972-2010

This volume collects the best and most influential essays that Stephen Stich has published in the last 40 years on topics in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. They discuss a wide range of topics including grammar, innateness, reference, folk psychology, eliminativism, connectionism, evolutionary psychology, simulation theory, social construction, and psychopathology. However, they are unified by two central concerns. The first is the viability of the commonsense conception of the mind in the face of challenges posed by both philosophical arguments and empirical findings. The second is the philosophical implications of research in the cognitive sciences which, in the last half century, has transformed both our understanding of the mind and the ways in which the mind is studied. The volume includes a new introductory essay that elaborates on these themes and offers an overview of the papers that follow.

1. - Grammar, Psychology, and Interdeterminancy
2. - The Idea of Innateness
3. - Beliefs and Subdoxastic States
4. - Autonomous Psychology and the Belief-Desire Thesis
5. - Dennett on International Systems
6. - Connectionism, Eliminativism and the Future of Folk Psychology
7. - Connectionism and Three Levels of Nativism
8. - Narrow Content Meets Fat Syntax
9. - Folk Psychology: Simulation vs. Tacit Theory?
10. - Intentionality and Naturalism
11. - What Is Folk Psychology?
12. - The Flight to Reference, or How Not to Make Progress in the Philosophy of
13. - The Odd Couple: The Compatibility of Social Construction and Evolutionary
14. - Darwin in the Madhouse: Evolutionary Psychology and the Classification of
15. - : Folk Psychology
16. - Semantics, Cross-Cultural Style
17. - Against Arguments from Reference

Stephen Stich is Board of Governors Professor, Philosophy Department, Rutgers University. He is the author of Deconstructing the Mind and Mindreading with Shaun Nichols.