Persons Minds And Bodies

Persons and Their Minds compares the conflicting claims of mindism and personism and argues for placing persons at the center of philosophy of mind. Mindism stems from Descartes, takes the spectator stance, and makes the mind the subject of mental verbs such as ?know,? ?think,? and ?believe.? Personism stems from Wittgenstein and Ryle, takes the agent stance, and restores persons to their proper place as subjects of mental verbs.Employing lessons taught by Wittgenstein and Ryle, the book offers a running criticism of mindism as it appears in the work of Descartes, Locke, Davidson, Fodor, Hume, Parfit, Dennett, Searle, McGinn, Flanagan, Chalmers, and Baars, and demonstrates personism's ability to resist various forms of mindism. Intended for upper-level or graduate students of philosophy, Persons and Their Minds should also interest psychologists, psychotherapists, and other professionals who use philosophy of mind in their work.

Today’s approaches to the study of the human mind are divided into seemingly opposed camps. On one side we find the neurosciences, with their more or less reductionist research programs, and on the other side we find the cultural and discursive approaches, with their frequent neglect of the material sides of human life. Persons and their Minds seeks to develop an integrative theory of the mind with room for both brain and culture. Brinkmann’s remarkable and thought-provoking work is one of the first books to integrate brain research with phenomenology, social practice studies and actor-network theory, all of which are held together by the concept of the person. Brinkmann’s new and informative approach to the person, the mind and mental disorder give this book a wide scope. The author uses Rom Harré’s hybrid psychology as a meta-theoretical starting point and expands this significantly by including four sources of mediators: the brain, the body, social practices and technological artefacts. The author draws on findings from cultural psychology and argues that the mind is normative in the sense that mental processes do not simply happen, but can be done more or less well, and thus are subject to normative appraisal. In addition to informative theoretical discussions, this book includes a number of detailed case studies, including a study of ADHD from the integrated perspective. Consequently, the book will be of great interest to academics and researchers in the fields of psychology, philosophy, sociology and psychiatry.

Today’s approaches to the study of the human mind are divided into seemingly opposed camps. On one side we find the neurosciences, with their more or less reductionist research programs, and on the other side we find the cultural and discursive approaches, with their frequent neglect of the material sides of human life. Persons and their Minds seeks to develop an integrative theory of the mind with room for both brain and culture. Brinkmann’s remarkable and thought-provoking work is one of the first books to integrate brain research with phenomenology, social practice studies and actor-network theory, all of which are held together by the concept of the person. Brinkmann’s new and informative approach to the person, the mind and mental disorder give this book a wide scope. The author uses Rom Harré’s hybrid psychology as a meta-theoretical starting point and expands this significantly by including four sources of mediators: the brain, the body, social practices and technological artefacts. The author draws on findings from cultural psychology and argues that the mind is normative in the sense that mental processes do not simply happen, but can be done more or less well, and thus are subject to normative appraisal. In addition to informative theoretical discussions, this book includes a number of detailed case studies, including a study of ADHD from the integrated perspective. Consequently, the book will be of great interest to academics and researchers in the fields of psychology, philosophy, sociology and psychiatry.

Persons and Minds is an inquiry into the possibilities of materialism. Professor Margolis starts his investigation, however, with a critique of the range of contemporary materialist theories, and does not find them viable. None of them, he argues, "can accommodate in a convincing way the most distinctive features of the mental life of men and oflower creatures and the imaginative possibilities of discovery and technology" (p. 8). In an extraordinarily rich analysis, Margolis carefully considers and criticizes mind-body identity theories, physicalism, eliminative materialism, behaviorism, as inadequate precisely in that they are reductive. He argues, then, for ramified concepts of emergence, and embodiment which will sustain a philosophically coherent account both of the distinctive non-natural character of persons and of their being naturally embodied. But Margolis provokes us to ask, what is an em bodied mind? The crucial context for him is not the plain physical body as such, but culture. "Persons", he writes, "are in a sense not natural entities: they exist only in cultural contexts and are identifiable as such only by refer ence to their mastery of language and of whatever further abilities presuppose such mastery" (p. 245). The hallmark of persons, in Margolis's account, is their capacity for freedom, as well as their physical endowment. Thus he writes, " . . . their characteristic powers - in effect, their freedom - must inform the order of purely physical causes in a distinctive way" (p. 246).

How should we deal with mental disorder - as an "illness" like diabetes or bronchitis, as a "problem in living", or what? This book seeks to answer such questions by going to their roots, in philosophical questions about the nature of the human mind, the ways in which it can be understood, and about the nature and aims of scientific medicine. The controversy over the nature of mental disorder and the appropriateness of the "medical model" is not just an abstract theoretical debate: it has a bearing on very practical issues of appropriate treatment, as well as on psychiatric ethics and law. A major contention of this book is that these questions are ultimately philosophical in character: they can be resolved only if we abandon some widespread philosophical assumptions about the "mind" and the "body", and about what it means for medicine to be "scientific". The "phenomenological" approach of the twentieth-century French philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty is used to question these assumptions. His conception of human beings as "body-subjects" is argued to provide a more illuminating way of thinking about mental disorder and the ways in which it can be understood and treated. The conditions we conventionally call "mental disorders" are, it is argued, not a homogeneous group: the standard interpretation of the medical model fits some more readily than others. The core mental disorders, however, are best regarded as disturbed ways of being in the world, which cause unhappiness because of deviation from "human" rather than straightforwardly "biological" norms. That is, they are problems in how we experience the world and especially other people, rather than in physiological functioning - even though the nature of our experience cannot ultimately be separated from the ways in which our bodies function. This analysis is applied within the book both to issues in clinical treatment and to the special ethical and legal questions of psychiatry. Written by a well known philosopher in an accessible and clear style, this book should be of interest to a wide range of readers, from psychiatrists to social workers, lawyers, ethicists, philosophers and anyone with an interest in mental health.

The nature of the mind and of consciousness; the reality of freedom; the concept of agency and the relation of language to the mental are all basic perennial philosophical issues. They are some of the topics pursued in these original essays by leading thinkers in the field of the contemporary philosophy of mind and action. The essays are based on the lectures given in The Royal Institute of Philosophy's annual lecture series for 2001-2002.

What is consciousness? Is the mind a machine? What makes each of us a person? How do our bodies relate to our minds? In this deeply engaging exploration of what it means to be human, Rowan Williams addresses these frequently asked questions with lucid meditations that draw from findings in neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and literature. Then he presses on to ask, Might faith be necessary to human flourishing? If so, why? And how can a traditional Christian practice—namely, silence—help us advance on the path to human maturity? The book ends with a brief but profound meditation on Christ’s ascension, inviting readers to consider how, through Jesus, our humanity in all its variety and vulnerability has been transfigured and taken into the heart of the divine life. Being Human is a book that readers of all religious persuasions will find both challenging and highly rewarding. Questions at the end of each chapter encourage personal reflection or group discussion.