The Mind-Body Problem

The Mind-Body Problem
Author: Jonathan Westphal
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 240
Release: 2016-09-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0262529564

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An introduction to the mind–body problem, covering all the proposed solutions and offering a powerful new one. Philosophers from Descartes to Kripke have struggled with the glittering prize of modern and contemporary philosophy: the mind-body problem. The brain is physical. If the mind is physical, we cannot see how. If we cannot see how the mind is physical, we cannot see how it can interact with the body. And if the mind is not physical, it cannot interact with the body. Or so it seems. In this book the philosopher Jonathan Westphal examines the mind-body problem in detail, laying out the reasoning behind the solutions that have been offered in the past and presenting his own proposal. The sharp focus on the mind-body problem, a problem that is not about the self, or consciousness, or the soul, or anything other than the mind and the body, helps clarify both problem and solutions. Westphal outlines the history of the mind-body problem, beginning with Descartes. He describes mind-body dualism, which claims that the mind and the body are two different and separate things, nonphysical and physical, and he also examines physicalist theories of mind; antimaterialism, which proposes limits to physicalism and introduces the idea of qualia; and scientific theories of consciousness. Finally, Westphal examines the largely forgotten neutral monist theories of mind and body, held by Ernst Mach, William James, and Bertrand Russell, which attempt neither to extract mind from matter nor to dissolve matter into mind. Westphal proposes his own version of neutral monism. This version is unique among neutral monist theories in offering an account of mind-body interaction.

Mind-Body Problems

Mind-Body Problems
Author: John Horgan
Publisher: Independently Published
Total Pages: 248
Release: 2019-01-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781731440488

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Science journalist John Horgan presents a radical new perspective on the mind-body problem and related issues such as consciousness, free will, morality and the meaning of life. Horgan argues that science will never discover an objectively true solution to the mind-body problem because such a solution does not exist. Horgan explores his thesis by delving into the professional and personal lives of nine mind-body experts, including neuroscientist Christof Koch, cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter, child psychologist Alison Gopnik, complexologist Stuart Kauffman, legal scholar and psychoanalyst Elyn Saks, philosopher Owen Flanagan, novelist Rebecca Goldstein, evolutionary biologist Robert Trivers, and economist Deirdre McCloskey.

The Mind-body Problem

The Mind-body Problem
Author: D. M. Armstrong
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2018-03-05
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0429964803

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The relation of mind to body has been argued about by philosophers for centuries. The Mind-Body Problem: An Opinionated Introduction presents the problem as a debate between materialists about the mind and their opponents. After examining the views of Descartes, Hume, and Thomas Huxley the debate is traced through the twentieth century to present day. The emphasis is always on the arguments used and the way one position develops from another. By the end of the book the reader is afforded both a grasp of the state of the controversy and how we got there.

The Mind–Body Problem

The Mind–Body Problem
Author: Mario Bunge
Publisher: Elsevier
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2014-05-09
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1483150127

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The Mind–Body Problem: A Psychobiological Approach examines the mind-body problem from a psychobiological perspective. It intends to show that the idea of a separate mental entity is not only unwarranted by the available data and the existing psychological models, but collides head-on with the most fundamental ideas of all modern science and is thus a stumbling block to progress. The book abandons ordinary language in favor of the state space language, which is mathematically precise and is shared by science and scientific philosophy. Comprised of 10 chapters, this monograph begins with an overview of the mind-body problem and its main proposed solutions, classified into main genera: psychophysical monism and psychophysical dualism. In particular, ten views on the mind-body problem are analyzed, along with three main varieties of materialism with regards to the problem: eliminative, reductive (or leveling), and emergentist. The discussion then turns to the notion of a concrete or material system, based on the assumption that behavior is an external manifestation of neural processes. Subsequent chapters explore the specific functions of the central nervous system; sensation and perception; behavior and motivation; memory and learning; thinking and knowing; and consciousness and personality. The book also considers sociality and social behavior in animals before concluding with an assessment of a psychological explanation of the mind, with emphasis on dualism and monism. This work will be of interest to students, academicians, practitioners, and investigators in the fields of psychobiology, psychology, neurophysiology, and philosophy.

Another Mind-Body Problem

Another Mind-Body Problem
Author: John Harfouch
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 270
Release: 2018-05-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438469977

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The mind-body problem in philosophy is typically understood as a discourse concerning the relation of mental states to physical states, and the experience of sensation. On this level it seems to transcend issues of race and racism, but Another Mind-Body Problem demonstrates that racial distinctions have been an integral part of the discourse since the Modern period in philosophy. Reading figures such as Descartes, Leibniz, and Kant in their historical contexts, John Harfouch uncovers discussions of mind and body that engaged closely with philosophical and scientific notions of race in metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, in particular in understanding how the mind unites with the body at birth and is then passed on through sexual reproduction. Kant argued that a person's exterior body and interior psyche are bound together, that non-White people lacked reason, and that this lack of reason was carried on through reproduction such that non-Whites were an example of a union of mind and body without full being. Charting the development of this phenomenon from sixteenth-century medical literature to modern-day race discourse, Harfouch argues for new understandings of Descartes's mind-body problem, Fanon's experience of being 'not-yet human,' and the place of racism in relation to one of philosophy's most enduring and canonical problems.

History of the Mind-Body Problem

History of the Mind-Body Problem
Author: Tim Crane
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 409
Release: 2012-10-12
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1134547366

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History of the Mind-Body Problem is a collection of new essays by leading contributors on the various concerns that have given rise to and informed the mind-body problem in philosophy. The essays in this stellar collection discuss famous philosophers such as Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes and cover the subjects of the origins of the qualia and intentionality.

Mind in a Physical World

Mind in a Physical World
Author: Jaegwon Kim
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2000
Genre: Body, Mind & Spirit
ISBN: 9780262611534

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This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind--in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism. This book, based on Jaegwon Kim's 1996 Townsend Lectures, presents the philosopher's current views on a variety of issues in the metaphysics of the mind--in particular, the mind-body problem, mental causation, and reductionism. Kim construes the mind-body problem as that of finding a place for the mind in a world that is fundamentally physical. Among other points, he redefines the roles of supervenience and emergence in the discussion of the mind-body problem. Arguing that various contemporary accounts of mental causation are inadequate, he offers his own partially reductionist solution on the basis of a novel model of reduction. Retaining the informal tone of the lecture format, the book is clear yet sophisticated.

Materialism and the Mind-body Problem

Materialism and the Mind-body Problem
Author: David M. Rosenthal
Publisher: Hackett Publishing
Total Pages: 336
Release: 2000-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780872204782

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Expanded and updated to include a wide range of classic and contemporary works, this new edition of David Rosenthal's anthology provides a selection of the most important and influential writings on materialism and the mind-body problem.

What Am I?

What Am I?
Author: Joseph Almog
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Total Pages: 170
Release: 2005
Genre: History
ISBN: 9780195177190

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Almog decodes Descartes' argument for distinguishing between the human mind and body while maintaining their essential integration in a human being. His reading not only steers away from popular interpretations of the philosopher, but also represents a scholar coming to grips directly with Descartes himself.

The Spontaneous Brain

The Spontaneous Brain
Author: Georg Northoff
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 533
Release: 2024-08-06
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 0262552825

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An argument for a Copernican revolution in our consideration of mental features—a shift in which the world-brain problem supersedes the mind-body problem. Philosophers have long debated the mind-body problem—whether to attribute such mental features as consciousness to mind or to body. Meanwhile, neuroscientists search for empirical answers, seeking neural correlates for consciousness, self, and free will. In this book, Georg Northoff does not propose new solutions to the mind-body problem; instead, he questions the problem itself, arguing that it is an empirically, ontologically, and conceptually implausible way to address the existence and reality of mental features. We are better off, he contends, by addressing consciousness and other mental features in terms of the relationship between world and brain; philosophers should consider the world-brain problem rather than the mind-body problem. This calls for a Copernican shift in vantage point—from within the mind or brain to beyond the brain—in our consideration of mental features. Northoff, a neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and philosopher, explains that empirical evidence suggests that the brain's spontaneous activity and its spatiotemporal structure are central to aligning and integrating the brain within the world. This spatiotemporal structure allows the brain to extend beyond itself into body and world, creating the “world-brain relation” that is central to mental features. Northoff makes his argument in empirical, ontological, and epistemic-methodological terms. He discusses current models of the brain and applies these models to recent data on neuronal features underlying consciousness and proposes the world-brain relation as the ontological predisposition for consciousness.