Philosophy Cognitive Science

Philosophy of Mind

Consciousness, Self, Thought, and the Place of Mind in Nature

Log In to Enroll About this course Get unlimited access
Philosophy of Mind logo
Quick Course Facts
20
Self-paced, Online, Lessons
20
Videos and/or Narrated Presentations
6.8
Approximate Hours of Course Media
About the Philosophy of Mind Course

Explore the central questions of Philosophy of Mind in this clear, engaging course on Consciousness, the Self, mental content, and the relationship between mind and body. You will learn how major philosophers and contemporary thinkers explain Thought, experience, agency, and the Place of Mind in Nature.

Examine Philosophy Of Mind Through Consciousness, Self, And Thought

  • Build a strong foundation in the mind-body problem and why it matters for Philosophy.
  • Compare major theories including dualism, physicalism, behaviourism, identity theory, functionalism, and eliminativism.
  • Analyze Consciousness, qualia, intentionality, perception, personal identity, free will, and moral responsibility.
  • Connect Philosophy of Mind to animal minds, artificial intelligence, mental disorder, and contemporary embodied approaches.

A structured introduction to Philosophy of Mind and the Place of Mind in Nature.

This course guides you through the essential debates in Philosophy of Mind, beginning with the foundations of the field and the enduring mind-body problem. You will examine classical and modern theories that ask whether mental states are separate from the physical world, identical with brain states, functional patterns, or concepts that may need to be revised by science.

Through lessons on intentionality, perception, illusion, Consciousness, qualia, Mary’s Room, philosophical zombies, and the hard problem, you will develop a sharper understanding of how Thought relates to experience. The course also explores the Self through personal identity, memory, agency, free will, and moral responsibility.

By extending the discussion beyond human beings, you will consider animal minds, artificial intelligence, the Chinese Room, embodied cognition, extended mind, and first-person authority in mental disorder and self-knowledge. By the end, you will think more clearly about Consciousness, Self, Thought, and whether the mind can fit within nature.

Course Lessons

Full lesson breakdown

Lessons are organized by topic area and each includes descriptive copy for search visibility and student clarity.

Foundations

2 lessons

Lesson 1: What Is the Philosophy of Mind?

18 min Preview
This opening lesson defines philosophy of mind as the branch of philosophy that asks what minds are, how mental life relates to the physical world, and why consciousness, thought, perception, emotion,…

Lesson 2: The Mind-Body Problem: Why It Matters

20 min
This lesson introduces the mind-body problem as the central organizing puzzle of philosophy of mind: how conscious experience, thought, agency, and the sense of self fit within a natural world describ…

Classical Theories

2 lessons

Lesson 3: Descartes and Substance Dualism

21 min
This lesson introduces René Descartes’s substance dualism, the classical view that mind and body are fundamentally different kinds of substance. Students examine why Descartes thought the thinking sel…

Lesson 4: Materialism, Physicalism, and the Scientific Image

20 min
This lesson introduces materialism and physicalism as attempts to place the mind within the natural world described by science. It explains why these views became attractive after the rise of modern b…

Twentieth-Century Theories

4 lessons

Lesson 5: Behaviourism and the Turn to Public Evidence

18 min
This lesson examines behaviourism as a decisive twentieth-century attempt to make the study of mind publicly testable. Instead of treating the mind as a hidden inner theatre known only through introsp…

Lesson 6: Identity Theory: Are Mental States Brain States?

20 min
This lesson examines identity theory , the mid-twentieth-century view that mental states are identical with brain states. Rather than treating mind and body as two different substances, identity theor…

Lesson 7: Functionalism: Mind as Pattern, Role, and System

22 min
This lesson introduces functionalism, one of the central twentieth-century theories of mind. Functionalism holds that mental states are defined less by what they are made of and more by what they do: …

Lesson 8: Eliminativism and the Challenge to Folk Psychology

19 min
This lesson examines eliminative materialism, the view that common-sense mental categories such as belief, desire, intention, and sensation may not correspond to real features of the mind. Rather than…

Mental Content

2 lessons

Lesson 9: Intentionality: How Thoughts Are About Things

21 min
This lesson introduces intentionality : the distinctive way many mental states are about or directed toward something. Beliefs, hopes, fears, memories, desires, and imaginings all seem to point beyond…

Lesson 10: Perception, Illusion, and the World as Experienced

20 min
This lesson examines perception as a central form of mental content: experience seems to present a world of objects, colors, shapes, sounds, textures, and spatial relations. The philosophical puzzle i…

Conscious Experience

3 lessons

Lesson 11: Consciousness and Qualia

22 min
This lesson introduces consciousness as subjective experience: what it is like to see red, feel pain, hear music, taste coffee, or notice anxiety from the inside. It focuses on qualia , the felt quali…

Lesson 12: The Knowledge Argument and Mary’s Room

19 min
This lesson examines Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument through the famous case of Mary, a brilliant color scientist raised in a black-and-white environment. Mary knows all the physical facts about co…

Lesson 13: Philosophical Zombies and the Hard Problem

21 min
This lesson introduces philosophical zombies as a central thought experiment in debates about consciousness. A philosophical zombie is imagined as a being physically and behaviorally identical to a co…

Self and Agency

2 lessons

Lesson 14: Personal Identity, Memory, and the Self

22 min
This lesson examines personal identity: what makes a person at one time the same person at another time. We focus on memory, psychological continuity, bodily continuity, and the idea of the self as a …

Lesson 15: Free Will, Agency, and Moral Responsibility

20 min
This lesson examines free will as a problem about agency: what it means for an action to be genuinely mine , and what conditions must hold for praise, blame, punishment, apology, and moral accountabil…

Minds Beyond the Human

2 lessons

Lesson 16: Animal Minds and the Limits of Human-Centred Philosophy

18 min
This lesson examines what philosophy of mind gains when it stops treating adult human cognition as the default model of mind. Animal minds challenge assumptions about language, rationality, selfhood, …

Lesson 17: Artificial Intelligence and the Chinese Room

22 min
This lesson examines whether artificial intelligence could genuinely have a mind, using John Searle’s Chinese Room argument as the central case study. Students distinguish behavioral competence from u…

Contemporary Directions

1 lesson

Lesson 18: Embodied, Extended, and Enactive Mind

21 min
This lesson introduces three influential contemporary approaches that challenge the idea that the mind is best understood as an inner, brain-bound processor: embodied cognition , extended mind , and e…

Contemporary Applications

1 lesson

Lesson 19: Mental Disorder, Self-Knowledge, and First-Person Authority

20 min
This lesson examines how mental disorder complicates two influential ideas in philosophy of mind: that each person normally has special authority over their own mental life, and that self-knowledge is…

Synthesis

1 lesson

Lesson 20: Can Consciousness Fit into Nature?

23 min
This synthesis lesson gathers the central question of the unit: whether consciousness can be understood as part of the natural world without being explained away. Students compare the main options int…
About Your Instructor
Professor Christina Ross

Professor Christina Ross

Professor Christina Ross guides this AI-built Virversity course with a clear, practical teaching style.