The Mind Body Problem And Its Solution Second Edition

OVER THE LAST CENTURY scientists have made tremendous strides in understanding the physical nature of the universe and the biochemical nature of life. Yet the most salient feature of individual lives--our day-to-day consciousness and experience of the world, or "sentience"--remains stubbornly immune to scientific explanation. This divide is called the "mind-body problem," and it is centuries old. In this book, author Carey Carlson performs two valuable tasks. First, he lays out the mind-body problem in crystalline common-sense prose. Second, he proposes an intriguing solution based on the work of early-twentieth-century philosophers Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead. This book will be of interest both to general readers of science and philosophy and to those steeped in the literature. The second edition includes additional arrow diagrams in Chapter 5 that fortify Russell and Whitehead's view of physics as a causal web of time-ordered events.

Over the last century scientists have made tremendous strides in understanding the physical nature of the universe and the biochemical nature of life. Yet the most salient feature of individual lives--our day-to-day consciousness and experience of the world, or sentience--remains stubbornly immune to scientific explanation. This divide is called the mind-body problem, and it is centuries old. In this book, author Carey Carlson performs two valuable tasks. First, he lays out the mind-body problem in crystalline common-sense prose. Second, he proposes an intriguing solution based on the work of early twentieth-century philosophers Bertrand Russell and Alfred North Whitehead. This book will be of interest both to general readers of science and philosophy and to those steeped in the literature.

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.

The hilarious underground bestseller about one woman’s pursuit of carnal pleasure—and the philosophy that gets in the way. When Renee Feuer goes to college, one of the first lessons she tries to learn is how to liberate herself from the restrictions of her Orthodox Jewish background. As she discovers the pleasures of the body, Renee also learns about the excitements of the mind. She enrolls as a philosophy graduate student, then marries Noam Himmel, the world-renowned mathematician. But Renee discovers that being married to a genius is a less elevating experience than expected, and that the allure of sex still beckons. Her quest for a solution to the conflicting demands of sensuality and spirit is a touching and always humorous adventure. “Terrific. . . . The first fifty or so pages are so clever and funny that I had to put the book down and go to the fridge to cool off.”—The New York Times Book Review “A terrific first novel . . . Goldenstein is intelligent and perceptive, bawdy and witty—an articulate writer of great talent.”—The Los Angeles Times Book Review

Widely used in philosophy courses, this succinct study explores the problem of determining the relation between the body and mind. In that philosophy seeks to elucidate man’s place and action in nature, Campbell asserts that our assessment of the body-mind problem affects our perspectives on metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and the natural sciences. After discussing how the body-mind problem developed, Campbell sets forth four incompatible propositions that serve as the framework for evaluating different philosophical approaches to the problem. Among competing perspectives, he examines dualism, behaviorist theories, the causal theory of mind, and central-state epiphenomenalism. This second edition includes a chapter on functionalism and an expanded bibliography.

Consciousness emerges as the key topic in this second edition of Owen Flanagan's popular introduction to cognitive science and the philosophy of psychology. in a new chapter Flanagan develops a neurophilosophical theory of subjective mental life. He brings recent developments in the theory of neuronal group selection and connectionism to bear on the problems of the evolution of consciousness, qualia, the unique first-personal aspects of consciousness, the causal role of consciousness, and the function and development of the sense of personal identity. He has also substantially revised the chapter on cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence to incorporate recent discussions of connectionism and parallel distributed processing.