In recent decades, issues that reside at the center of philosophical and
psychological inquiry have been absorbed into a scientific framework
variously identified as "brain science," "cognitive science," and
"cognitive neuroscience." Scholars have heralded this development as
revolutionary, but a revolution implies an existing method has been
overturned in favor of something new. What long-held theories have been
abandoned or significantly modified in light of cognitive neuroscience?
Consciousness and Mental Life questions our present approach to the
study of consciousness and the way modern discoveries either mirror or
contradict understandings reached in the centuries leading up to our
own. Daniel N. Robinson does not wage an attack on the emerging
discipline of cognitive science. Rather, he provides the necessary
historical context to properly evaluate the relationship between issues
of consciousness and neuroscience and their evolution over time.
Robinson begins with Aristotle and the ancient Greeks and continues
through to René Descartes, David Hume, William James, Daniel Dennett,
John Searle, Richard Rorty, Hilary Putnam, and Derek Parfit. Approaching
the issue from both a philosophical and a psychological perspective,
Robinson identifies what makes the study of consciousness so problematic
and asks whether cognitive neuroscience can truly reveal the origins of
mental events, emotions, and preference, or if these occurrences are
better understood by studying the whole person, not just the brain.
Well-reasoned and thoroughly argued, Consciousness and Mental Life
corrects many claims made about the success of brain science and
provides a valuable historical context for the study of human
consciousness.
