I thought I'd post a little about what I'm interested in in order to try and find points of contact with people on this forum. I'm coming from a naturalist / materialist philosophy perspective where philosophy is on a continuum with the natural sciences, and the relationship between philosophy and science is reciprocal. My main area of interest is philosophy of mind (including philosophy of psychology / psychiatry / psychopathology) and I have fairly recently developed an interest in evolutionary psychology / biology / behavioural ecology especially as it may assist us in working out the function of mental states (belief, desire, emotion etc).

I've done some reading on the evolution of belief. I'm not sure how this will compare to other peoples reading: Daniel Dennett (the evolution of consciousness, belief, desire); Ruth Millikan (the notion of 'proper function'); Kim Sterelney (evolution of belief, desire) and really... Thats just about it. (Fairly recent interest...)

My current area of interest is emotion. Are emotions natural kinds? How are emotions different to / the same as / related to other cognitive states such as belief and desire? What different kinds of emotion are there? The idea is basically to start with affect programs and try and build up to the 'more complex emotion episodes of interest to moral psychologists'. Also the notion of Machiavellian emotions (excuse my spelling).

The main text here is Paul E. Griffiths:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/022...lance&n=283155

And there are a couple papers which develop the ideas too (the following will download the pdf)...

http://www.uq.edu.au/biohumanities/w...n_Emotions.pdf

Anyway... Any comments, thoughts, or points of contact?