Adriano Palma

In a breezy introduction to the philosophy of mind edited by Heather Salazar, the beginner reader is immersed in an easy way into issues that are not otherwise easy to grasp, such as why one must interpret differently ‘taking the child back to the zoo’ and ‘taking the car back to the zoo’, and what makes it very hard to tell a vegetarian what octopus salad tastes like.

All the same the reader gets the right glimpse of why, centuries after they were written, the ideas of  Descartes and Hobbes are relevant to the presence of zombies among us, or the scary prospect that the arguments to the effect that we are the zombies are correct.

An excellent way to start a class on the philosophy of mind, without being bogged down from the get go into the synapses that got away.

— Adriano Palma, University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa