Evolutionary psychology is one of many biologically informed approaches to the study of human behavior. Along with cognitive psychologists, evolutionary psychologists propose that much, if not all, of our behavior can be explained by appeal to internal psychological mechanisms. What distinguishes evolutionary psychologists from many cognitive psychologists is the proposal that the relevant internal mechanisms are adaptations—products of natural selection—that helped our ancestors get around the world, survive and reproduce. To understand the central claims of evolutionary psychology we require an understanding of some key concepts in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, philosophy of science and philosophy of mind. Philosophers are interested in evolutionary psychology for a number of reasons. For philosophers of science —mostly philosophers of biology—evolutionary psychology provides a critical target. There is a broad consensus among philosophers of science that evolutionary psychology is a deeply flawed enterprise. For philosophers of mind and cognitive science evolutionary psychology has been a source of empirical hypotheses about cognitive architecture and specific components of that architecture. Philosophers of mind are also critical of evolutionary psychology but their criticisms are not as all-encompassing as those presented by philosophers of biology. Evolutionary psychology is also invoked by philosophers interested in moral psychology both as a source of empirical hypotheses and as a critical target.

/pdf/stanford-encyclopedia-of-philosophy-1wqoykisq0.pdf

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

I. PRELIMINARIES 1. Two Concepts of Mind 2. Supervenience and Explanation II. THE IRREDUCIBILITY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 3. Can Consciousness be Reductively Explained? 4. Naturalistic Dualism 5. The Paradox of Phenomenal Judgment III. TOWARD A THEORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS 6. The Coherence between Consciousness and Cognition 7. Absent Qualia, Fading Qualia, Dancing Qualia 8. Consciousness and Information: Some Speculation IV. APPLICATIONS 9. Strong Artificial Intelligence 10. The Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics Notes Bibliography

The conscious mind: in search of a fundamental theory

Many current neurophysiological, psychophysical, and psychological approaches to vision rest on the idea that when we see, the brain produces an internal representation of the world. The activation of this internal representation is assumed to give rise to the experience of seeing. The problem with this kind of approach is that it leaves unexplained how the existence of such a detailed internal representation might produce visual consciousness. An alternative proposal is made here. We propose that seeing is a way of acting. It is a particular way of exploring the environment. Activity in internal representations does not generate the experience of seeing. The outside world serves as its own, external, representation. The experience of seeing occurs when the organism masters what we call the governing laws of sensorimotor contingency. The advantage of this approach is that it provides a natural and principled way of accounting for visual consciousness, and for the differences in the perceived quality of sensory experience in the different sensory modalities. Several lines of empirical evidence are brought forward in support of the theory, in particular: evidence from experiments in sensorimotor adaptation, visual “filling in,” visual stability despite eye movements, change blindness, sensory substitution, and color perception.

/pdf/a-sensorimotor-account-of-vision-and-visual-consciousness-1o8kf5szfs.pdf

A sensorimotor account of vision and visual consciousness

What's wrong with the philosophy of mind the recent history of materialism - the same mistake over and over, appendix - is there a problem about folk psychology? breaking the hold - silicon brains, conscious robots, and other minds consciousness and its place in nature reductionism and the irreducibility of consciousness the structure of consciousness - an introduction the unconscious and its relation to consciousness consciousness, intentionality and the background the critique of cognitive reason the proper study.

The Rediscovery of the Mind

Consciousness is a mongrel concept: there are a number of very different "consciousnesses." Phenomenal consciousness is experience; the phenomenally conscious aspect of a state is what it is like to be in that state. The mark of access-consciousness, by contrast, is availability for use in reasoning and rationally guiding speech and action. These concepts are often partly or totally conflated, with bad results. This target article uses as an example a form of reasoning about a function of "consciousness" based on the phenomenon of blindsight. Some information about stimuli in the blind field is represented in the brains of blindsight patients, as shown by their correct "guesses," but they cannot harness this information in the service of action, and this is said to show that a function of phenomenal consciousness is somehow to enable information represented in the brain to guide action. But stimuli in the blind field are BOTH access-unconscious and phenomenally unconscious. The fallacy is: an obvious function of the machinery of access-consciousness is illicitly transferred to phenomenal consciousness.

https://www.cambridge.org/core/services/aop-cambridge-core/content/view/S0140525X00038188

On a confusion about a function of consciousness.

Preface to the Paperback Edition Introduction Part One: Theories of Mind 1 A Classification of Theories of Mind 2 Dualism 3 The Attribute Theory 4 A Difficulty for any Non-materialist Theory of Mind 5 Behaviourism 6The Central-State Theory Part Two: The Concept of Mind 7 The Will (1) 8 The Will (2) 9 Knowledge and Inference 10 Perception and Belief 11 Perception and Behaviour 12 The Secondary Qualities 13 Mental Images 14 Bodily Sensations 15 Introspection 16 Belief and Thought Part Three: The Nature of Mind 17 Identification of the Mental with the Physical Bibliography Index

A materialist theory of the mind

* The Problem * Primitive Natural Classes * Resemblance Nominalism * Particulars as Bundles of Universals * Universals as Attributes * Tropes * Summing Up

Universals : an opinionated introduction

Acknowledgements Part I. A Critique of the Regularity Theory: 1. Introductory 2. Critique of the regularity theory (1): the problem of accidental uniformities 3. Critique of the regularity theory (2) 4. Critique of the regularity theory (3) Part II. Laws of Nature as Relations Between Universals: 6. Laws of nature as relations between universals 7. Functional laws 8. Unsubstantiated laws 9. Probabilistic laws 10. Further considerations concerning the form of laws 11. Are the laws of nature necessary or contingent? Conclusions Index.

What is a law of nature

The A. wants to reconcile maximalisme about truthmakers (every truth 
has a truthmaker) and the relation of necessitation (every contingent truth can be used 
in a truthmaker for a necessary truth). He investigates the metaphysical sense of the 
implication and whether one can admit de re contingency. He examines the pure possibilities and the case of alien properties according with David Lewis and studies whether 
it is contingent that there is something rather than nothing. He analyses the truthmakers 
of necessary truths and adopts a possibilist thesis for matters of demonstrative science. 
He concludes with the transcategorial (and metaphysical) necessity which is implicit in 
the generalization of truthmakers.

Truth and Truthmakers

Belief, Truth and Knowledge.

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