Philosophy of mind has been one of the most active fields in philosophy
for the past three decades. One of the most significant factors in the
development of this discipline has been the emergence of cognitive
science and the interest philosophers have taken in the empirical study
of mind. Another equally important factor has been the "naturalistic
tum" brought about by W. V. Quine. His proposal that normative
epistemology be replaced by empirical psychology marked a radical
departure from the Fregean "anti- psychologism" and "apriorism" that had
characterized much of the analytic tradition in philosophy. But while
Quine's program of naturalization called the attention of philosophers
to empirical psychology, his conception of psychology was inspired by an
austere behaviorism which shunned the mentalism of intentional
psychology in the Brentanian and phenomenological tradition. Thus, while
agreeing with Brentano that the "intentional idiom" could not be reduced
to that of the natural sciences, Quine argued that it is of a piece with
the indeterminacy of translation. Most contributors of this col- lection
share the cognitivist stance and believe that the mind needs to be
explained rather than eliminated. Three main questions are actually
confronting current philosophers of mind, each addressed by one or
another of the contributors to the present collection.