Wikipedia:WikiProject Philosophy/Mind

Rendering of a human brain generated from MRI data

Welcome to WikiProject Philosophy of Mind (WPPM), a subproject of WikiProject Philosophy.

Scope and Goals

The focus of WPPM will be to work as diligently as is humanly possible to create professional-quality, thoroughly documented, and encyclopedic articles on the philosophy of mind and to integrate them as much as possible with work from all branches of the cognitive sciences: experimental psychology, neurosciences, linguistics, computer science, artificial intelligence, anthropology, ethology etc.

Philosophy of mind is a particularly challenging, but also exciting, field because much of its most important and groundbreaking work lies at the subtle confine between philosophy and science, between the humanities and rigorous scientific research. It attempts to bridge the gap between the so-called two cultures by creating a synthesizing third culture that includes and enhances the first two.

The current main article of philosophy of mind contains hardly any information on important theoretical concepts and what it does contain is extremely ill-organized and confused. Philosophy of mind is a large and complex field. Indeed, a growing number of philosophers believe that the analytic tradition of philosophy is currently undergoing a shift from an emphasis on language to an emphasis on mind and its contents. The vast amount of information is too much for one or two people to handle. The coordinative effort of all those willing to assist is needed.

Since we are a derivative of WikiProject Philosophy, our goals are very similar and are as follows:

1. To serve as a nexus and discussion area for contributors with knowledge of philosophy of mind;
2. To identify those areas of philosophy of mind which lack sufficient coverage on Wikipedia;
3. To improve those articles that need help;
4. To create a general map of the philosophy of mind articles and subjects on Wikipedia and link the articles together accordingly.

Current goals

• Identify and create missing philosophy of mind content (see Writing and Editing)
• Improve the categorization and organization of philosophy of mind material
• Gather interest and participation in a philosophy of mind community within Wikipedia, including a Philosophy of Mind Collaboration project
• Maintain and improve the Mind and Brain Portal
• Translate whole articles or sections from good German articles such as: de:Bewusstsein, de:Philosophie des Geistes, de:Qualia, de:Supervenienz, de:Kognitionswissenschaft etc.

Writing and Editing

Articles in need of attention

• functionalism (philosophy of mind) mentions only one form of functionalism (machine state). I'll try to get to it ASAP
• Computational theory of mind - Barely an article (two lines).
• Dualism (philosophy of mind) - Can be much improved. (Update: The article is being rewritten in this sandbox.)
• Eliminative materialism - Much room for improvement. (Update: Fairly improved as of Feb 14th)
• Emergent materialism - Needs expansion, bibliography, links etc.
• Jaegwon Kim
• Mind - Needs to be cleaned up and is far from excellence.
• Mind-body problem - Needs to be cleaned up etc.
• Multiple Drafts Model - See Talk page, there's been much argument over this article.
• Neurophilosophy - Stub. Needs to be expanded.
• Neutral monism - Short stub.
• Philosophy of mind - Main article needs to be brought up to, at least, the standard of the German version.
• Physicalism - Needs expansion and cleaning up. The German article is excellent.
• Stephen Stich - One line stub.
• Supervenience
• The problem of other minds - Needs expansion, bibliography, links etc. Please see the talk page and give your opinion on the article's title.
• Theory of mind - Needs expansion and cleaning up.

Requested articles

• Michael Devitt
• Paul Boghossian
• Ullin Place
• theory-theory