Abstract

The “Peripheral Mind Hypothesis” (PMH) is presented and explained, as well as claims about what a philosophical hypothesis, in general, is supposed to work. As an illustration of how the PMH works and of how, in fact, it is more plausible than central state theories, the author presents the current state of visual awareness research. The chapter ends with an analysis of the distinction between causal and constitutive contribution of a process to the instantiation of a mental state, and the issue of what an embodied approach to the mind might hope to achieve in terms of arguments and explanatory power.