The Peripheral Mind

István Aranyosi was born in Sighet/Máramarossziget, in the north of Transylvania, in 1975. He studied philosophy in Budapest, at the Central European University, where he obtained his PhD in 2005. In 2006-2007 he was a fellow at the Centre for Consciousness, The Australian National University. He is currently Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bilkent University, Ankara. In 2012 he obtained Honorable Mention for his essay "A new argument for mind-brain identity" at the American Philosophical Association's prestigious biennial Article Prize.

• Preface and Acknowledgments ; Chapter I: Margins of Me: a Personal Story ; PART 1: MINDS AND NERVES ; Chapter II: A Philosophical Hypothesis ; II.1 PMH as a philosophical hypothesis ; II.2 PMH and the case of visual awareness research ; II.3 Causal versus constitutive contribution ; Chapter III: Return of the C fibers, or Philosophers' Lack of Nerve ; III.1 Well, maybe the mind is the brain ... somewhere ; III.2 Folk neuroscience and the philosophy of mind ; III.3 Nervous systems and closet sunsum theory ; Chapter IV: Toward a Well-Innervated Philosophy of Mind ; IV.1 'It's just cables!' ; IV.2 Functionalist troubles? ; The mad pain problem ; The problem of pseudo-normal vision ; The China-brain problem ; The triviality problem ; PART 2: BOUNDS OF MIND ; Chapter V: Semantic Externalism ; V.1 Twin Earth ; V.2 Anti-Narrowness and Determination ; V.3 Anti-wideness ; V.4 Skinternalism: an Anti-Internalist Individualism ; V.5 Some further issues ; Chapter VI: Mind Extended ; VI.1 Allegedly extended processes ; VI.2 Allegedly extended states ; PART 3: MIND EMBODIED ; Chapter VII: Embodiment and the Peripheral Mind ; VII.1 'Fingers crossed for the embodied mind!' ; VII.2 Phenomenal embodiment and innervation ; VII.3 Against proper disembodiment ; Chapter VIII: Against Action as Constitutive of Mind ; VIII.1 Embodied central processing ; VIII.2 The conceptual role of the Neuromuscular Junction ; VIII. 3 A brief critique of action-based (sensorimotor) theories ; PART 4: MIND AND ETHICS ; Chapter IX: Issues in Neuroethics ; IX.1 Abortion: Thick potentiality ; IX.2 Amputation: Peripheral precedence ; Chapter X: Concluding Remarks ; References ; Name Index ; Topic Index

The book demonstrates the cognitive role of the peripheral nervous system. It presents a well argued theroy to the effect that the mind is not contained in the cranium, but it extends out into the nervous systems, suffusing the body as far as it is innervated ... The author draws on empirical science and engages most of the current topics in philosophy of mind, including them into his theory of peripheral mind. Reading his work, a student-reader will thus become aquainted with almost all of the details of recent philosophy of mind development, while a scholar-reader will become acquainted with new developments in the theory of embodied and extended mind. In my view, Aranyosi has succeeded in providing the best descriptive account of embodiment so far in the philosophy of mind, and he is certainly right to assert that contemporary philosophy has unjustly neglected the significance of the peripheral nervous system.