About the Journal

About
Scope
Content
Features
History
Abstracting and indexing services

MIND has long been a leading journal in philosophy. For well over 100 years it has published the best new work in all areas of the subject. The journal continues its tradition of excellence today. The journal aims to take quality to be the sole criterion of publication, with no area of philosophy, no style of philosophy, and no school of philosophy excluded. Each issue also contains a selection of book reviews that summarize and evaluate some of the most interesting recent publications in the discipline.

MIND has always enjoyed a strong reputation for the high standards established by its editors and receives over 800 submissions each year. The editors seek advice from a large number of expert referees, including members of the network of associate editors and the Editorial Board. MIND is published quarterly on behalf of the Mind Association.

Scope

MIND is well known for cutting edge philosophical papers in epistemology, metaphysics, philosophy of language, philosophy of logic, and philosophy of mind. The editorial team aspires to preserve this tradition in analytic philosophy, but also to enrich and broaden it.

The editorial team would love to see MIND publish the best philosophy in a variety of fields, including continental philosophy and the history of philosophy. Broad-brushed discussions of significant trends in academic philosophy in general and attempts to map the connections and divisions between different philosophical traditions are welcome, as are developments of ideas within highly specific paradigms.

Each issue also contains a selection of book reviews that summarize and evaluate some of the most interesting recent publications in the discipline, and many issues contain sharply focused responses to articles in previous issues.

In keeping with the earliest ambitions of the journal, MIND also aims to publish work that crosses normal boundaries between disciplines, whether by bringing other disciplines to bear on traditional philosophical questions or by using philosophical tools to address questions that philosophy has largely left to other disciplines.

Content

Review at MIND is 'triple-anonymous' — the identity of authors is not revealed to editors or referees unless and until a paper is accepted for publication. New submissions are sent by the Managing Editor to a member of the editorial team who makes an initial assessment about suitability. To reduce the time that authors wait for decisions, many submissions will be rejected at this stage without comments. Even highly creditable submissions will be rejected at this stage. Other submissions are sent for peer review by specialist referees. We ask referees to return reports and recommendations to us within eight weeks, and we aim to provide authors with a decision within four months. Once we receive reports, a member of the editorial team will make a decision regarding the submission, taking into account the advice that we have received from referees.

For further information about the review and submissions process, please refer to the Author Guidelines.

MIND publishes philosophical work that falls into one of four categories: 

Articles

MIND is committed to equality and diversity and welcomes submissions from all groups in philosophy. Papers on all aspects of philosophy will be considered. Authors are encouraged to present their arguments in a way that makes them accessible to a broad readership among philosophers; where technical material is included it should be accompanied by informal exposition of the argument. Submissions should be no longer than around 8,000 words in total. Papers accepted for publication may grow in the review process, but only in exceptional circumstances will submissions be considered if they are significantly over 8,000 words.

Discussions

As an acknowledgement of the importance of dialogue in philosophy, discussion notes have always been an integral part of MIND's publications. Brief comments engaging with work published in MIND (but not elsewhere) are welcome.

Book Reviews 

The founders of MIND intended it to serve as both a compendium and a review of recent publications in book form. In keeping with this, MIND routinely publishes reviews of thought-provoking and promising books in all fields of philosophy. 

Critical Notices

Critical notices, like book reviews, deal with recently published books. But they are longer than book reviews and give authors greater opportunity to develop ideas of their own in response to the ideas canvassed in the books under discussion.

Features

To showcase the quality, impact, and diversity of MIND publications, we regularly publish reading lists, virtual issues, and short pieces on a variety of topics. Recent features include:

• Emotions
• Forgotten Ideas
• Curiosities
• Virtual Issue: 80s Classics
• Women in Philosophy
• Sophie Bryant reading list

History

MIND was founded in 1876 as a quarterly philosophy review and was intended to serve as a platform for the growing interest in and professionalization of English-speaking work in psychology and philosophy. In his foreword to the first edition, MIND's first editor George Croom Robertson expressed the journal's aim “to procure a decision of this question as to the scientific standing of psychology.” He was convinced that “[e]ither psychology would in time pass with general consent into the company of the sciences, or the hollowness of its pretensions would be plainly revealed. Nothing less, in fact, is aimed at in the publication of MIND […].” 

Despite the specificity of its initial focus, MIND has been dedicated to an impartial and catholic approach throughout its history: “the expression of all that is most original and valuable in current English thought, without predilection for any special school or any special department...”, a sentiment which has animated each of the subsequent editors. MIND's recently renewed commitment to diversity of philosophical traditions can be traced back to the early days of the journal: “To speak, in the same connection, of such subjects as Logic, Aesthetics and Ethics, may seem strange, but there is good reason for so doing.” 

In its earliest years MIND was privately supported, first by Alexander Bain, who had founded the periodical and installed Robertson as editor, and then by Henry Sidgwick. On Sidgwick's death and at his suggestion, a Mind Association was formed to ensure the journal's financial security.

Landmark articles and notable contributions

Late 19th century

• A Biographical Sketch of an Infant (1877) – Charles Darwin
• Some Proposed Reforms in Common Logic (1890) and On Theories of Light Sensation (1893) – Christine Ladd Franklin
• What is an Emotion? (1884) – William James
• What the Tortoise Said to Achilles (1895) – Lewis Carroll
• Variety of Extent, Degree and Unity in Self-Consciousness (1897) – Sophie Bryant. (See https://academic.oup.com/mind/pages/sophie_bryant)

Early 20th century

• The Refutation of Idealism (1903) – G.E. Moore
• On Denoting (1905) – Bertrand Russell
• The Unreality of Time (1908) – J. M. E. McTaggart
• Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake? (1912) – H. A. Prichard
• The Vedantic Good (1915) – P. Narasimhan
• On the Nature of Memory (1920) – Dorothy Wrinch
• Testimony as a Method of Knowledge (1927) – Dhirendon Mohon Datta

Mid 20th century

• Finitism in Mathematics (1935) – Alice Ambrose
• The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms (1937) – Charles Leslie Stevenson
• Studies in the Logic of Confirmation (1945) – Carl G. Hempel
• The Contrary-to-Fact Conditional (1946) – Roderick M. Chisholm
• Computing Machinery and Intelligence (1950) – Alan Turing
• On Referring (1950) – P. F. Strawson
• Deontic Logic (1951) – G.H. von Wright
• The Identity of Indiscernibles (1952) – Max Black
• Evil and Omnipotence (1955) – J. L. Mackie
• Aristotle and the Sea Battle (1956) – G.E.M Anscombe
• Moral Arguments (1958) – Philippa Foot

Late 20th century

• The Justification of Deduction (1976) – Susan Haack
• On the Sense and Reference of a Proper Name (1977) – John McDowell
• The Importance of Freewill (1981) – Susan Wolf
• Fodor's Guide to Mental Representation (1985) – Jerry Fodor
• Utilitarianism and the Virtues (1985) – Philippa Foot
• The Humean Theory of Motivation (1987) – Michael Smith
• Conscious Experience (1993) – Fred Dretske
• Moore's Paradox: A Wittgensteinian Approach (1994) – Jane Heal
• Language and Nature (1995) – Noam Chomsky
• Is Knowing a State of Mind (1995) – Timothy Williamson
• On Conditionals (1995) – Dorothy Edgington

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