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Reviewer: Adam Drozdek

Crane is interested in the question of whether the mind lends itself to a mechanical explanation or whether the mind can be explained naturally in terms of causal order. However, according to the author, "two kinds of phenomena stand out as obstacles to the mechanical view of mind: the phenomenon of consciousness and the phenomenon of thought and mental representation" (page 6). The book focuses on the latter problem; the problem of consciousness is addressed in the last chapter. Chapter 1 discusses how it could be possible that one thing represents another. Pictorial representation is one possibility, but it does not explain other representations. Pictures require interpretation, and so do linguistic representations. This interpretation is derived from mental representations or intentionality. Mental representation is thus most fundamental. Mental states (thoughts, beliefs, desires, and so on) are discussed, and two aspects of thoughts (propositional attitudes) are presented: represented situations (propositions, representational contents) and attitudes toward the situations. Intentionality is also discussed (as distinguished from intensionality), and Brentano's thesis that all and only mental phenomena exhibit intentionality is reviewed. Representational states of mind are discussed in chapter 2. Having introduced the mind-body problem and the other minds problem, the author stresses that we know a lot about the minds of others, and about their thoughts, "by making reasoned conjectures about what makes sense of their behaviour" (page 52), primarily using common-sense knowledge (folk psychology). A discussion of the theory theory is then presented. This is the view that common-sense psychology is a theory, and includes generalizations to "describe the effects and potential effects of having certain thoughts" (page 68), and is therefore central to the psychology that thoughts, possibly unconscious, with their representational content, are causes of actions. To address the problem of how it is that a thought can represent something and be a cause of behavior, the author discusses the computational view of mind in chapter 3. Can a computer think__?__ First, the author devotes some space to the introduction of some basic concepts of computing (function, algorithm, Turing machine, coding, and a helpful distinction between instantiating and computing a function). Inevitably, the Turing test, Chinese room argument, and Dreyfus's criticism of artificial intelligence (AI) are presented, with the conclusion that this criticism "licenses a certain amount of skepticism about the idea of building a thinking computer," because of the problem of representing common-sense knowledge (page 123). Chapter 4 addresses the problem of the mind being a computer. The computational theory of mind suggests that computational states of minds, such as beliefs, are interconnected in a computational way, which is more than simply a causal way. The author presents two theories of mind: the language of thought theory, and the connectionist model, with an inconclusive conclusion that more empirical knowledge is needed to decide between the two. The computational theory of mind takes representations for granted, so the representations themselves are discussed in chapter 5. Attempts to reduce the concept of representation do not successfully grapple with the error problem: how is it that representations can be erroneous__?__ Moreover, reductive theories are inadequate in handling all mental representations, not only simple ones. The author suggests that the nonreductive approach is more promising, although it allows for the idea that "computational mental states do not have unique contents which are essential to them" (page 207). Chapter 6 turns to a tension between how the mind seems to us and how it is presented by the computational theory. The theory is interested in the systematic aspect of causal connections between thoughts and actions, not in the subjective aspects of the mind. But this disinterest is just the result of the inability of the theory to address the problem of subjectivity. This can be seen in how the problem of consciousness is solved, or not solved at all, including the problem of "what it is like to be a bat," and the problem of qualia. However, since causality does not have to be rendered in physicalist terms, and "the heart of the mechanical view of the mind is the idea that the mind is a causal mechanism," the book concludes (pages 230-231) with the statement that there are no powerful arguments against the mechanical view of the mind. This book is an excellent introduction to the fundamental problems of the contemporary philosophy of mind. It will be useful as a general reader, and as a textbook in an introductory cognitive science course. Online Computing Reviews Service