Eckert - Theories of Mind: An Introductory Reader

J. J. C. Smart is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University and Honorary Research Fellow at Monash University. His works include papers on physicalism as well as other areas of philosophical inquiry such as ethics and philosophy of religion. A published collection of his articles is Essays Metaphysical and Moral (1987).

Alan M. Turing (1912-1954), British mathematician, logician, and cryptographer, is considered one of the fathers of modern computer science. His Turing Test contributed to the debate regarding artificial intelligencewhether it will ever be possible to say that a machine is conscious and can think. During World War II, Turing worked at Bletchley Park, Britains codebreaking center and was for a time responsible for German Naval crypt-analysis. He devised techniques for breaking German codes, including the Enigma code. After the war, at the University of Manchester he worked largely on software, on the Manchester Mark I, then emerging as one of the worlds earliest true computers.

David Lewis (1941-2001) was a professor of philosophy at Princeton University. He worked in many areas of philosophy, including philosophy of mind, language, and metaphysics. Famous works of his include, Counterfactuals (1973), On the Plurality of Worlds (1986), and several volumes of collected papers including Philosophical Papers , Vol. 1 (1983).

Ned Block is Silver Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at New York University. He is the author of numerous papers in the areas of philosophy of mind and consciousness, psychology, and cognitive science. He is one of the editors of The Nature of Consciousness: Philosophical Debates (1997).

Frank Jackson is Distinguished Professor at the Australian National University. His research includes the areas of Philosophical Logic, Cognitive Science, Epistemology and Metaphysics, and Meta-Ethics. His works include Perception: A Representative Theory (1977) and his collected papers are reprinted in Mind, Method, and Conditionals: Selected Essays (1998).

Paul Churchland is professor of philosophy at the University of California, San Diego. His research spans the areas of philosophy of mind, artificial intelligence and cognitive neurobiology, epistemology, and perception. His books include The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul: A Philosophical Journey into the Brain (1995) and A Neurocomputational Perspective: The Nature of Mind and the Structure of Science (1989), as well as Matter and Consciousness (1984; second edition 1988) which provides us with our reading selection.

. Daniel Dennett is University Professor of Philosophy, Austin B. Fletcher Professor and Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University. He is author of numerous papers in the areas of philosophy of mind, consciousness, and cognitive science and major works include The Intentional Stance (1989), Consciousness Explained (1991), and Freedom Evolves (2003).

Andy Clark is professor of philosophy and director of the Cognitive Science Program at Indiana University, Bloomington. His books include Being There: Putting Brain, Body and World Together Again (1997) and Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science (2000).