PHIL 2039 - Mental Representation, Consciousness and Self

In spite of the huge advances made in other areas of natural science, much about the human mind remains mysterious. In particular, there are three outstanding problems concerning the mind and its relationship to the world: How does the mind construct mental representations, and in doing so impose meaning on a material universe? What is the nature of consciousness and how can it be explained naturalistically? What is the nature of self and how is it constructed by the human brain? This course will examine each of these questions, and survey the most promising answers developed by contemporary philosophers of mind.