Having thought

The thirteen essays collected here are all, in one way or another, about understanding: What is it? What does it take to have it? What does it presuppose in what can be understood? In the first group of essays, under the heading Mind, the questions are more specifically about intelligence: First, how can intelligence itself be understood scientifically (as in "cognitive science"); and second, how can the scientific endeavor, so conceived, account for the possibility of a self or subject that understands? Under the second head, Matter, the focus turns to the metaphysical issues surrounding the…