MIND, PHILOSOPHY OF

reflection on the nature of the mind and of mental acts, including such problems as the relation of the mind to the body, personal identity through time, and the knowledge of other minds. One attribute that sharply distinguishes man from the rest of nature is his highly developed capacity for thought, feeling, and deliberate action. Here and there in other animals, rudiments, approximations, and limited elements of this capacity may occasionally be found; but the full-blown development that is called a mind is unmatched elsewhere in nature. The task assumed by the discipline known as the philosophy of mind is to examine and analyze those concepts that involve the mind (including the very concept of the mind itself) in an attempt to discover the nature of each of these concepts, the relations between them, how they are to be classified, and how they are to be related to certain other conceptsespecially to the concepts of matter and energy, the human body, and, in particular, the central nervous system. It should be clear that the range of topics in the philosophy of mind goes far beyond what is intended in everyday discourse by mind. When, for example, the layman speaks of someone as having a good mind or as pursuing the pleasures of the mind, he is thinking of those particular activities that have to do with abstract reasoning, intellectual pursuits, and the exercise of intelligence. The mind, as the term is used more technically in this article and in the philosophy of mind in general today, encompasses a variety of elements including sensation and sense perception, feeling and emotion, dreams, traits of character and personality, the unconscious, and the volitional aspects of human life, as well as the more narrowly intellectual phenomena, such as thought, memory, and belief. Additional reading Various formulations of Materialism can be found in the writings of the pre-Socratic philosophers, especially Leucippus and Democritus. Plato, Phaedo, Timaeus, Phaedrus, and books iv and x of the Republic, demonstrate his dualism and his views on the nature of the soul. Aristotle, De Anima (On the Soul), is a whole treatise devoted to the subject, expressing a qualified Materialism. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651), is radically Materialistic; whereas Ren Descartes, Meditationes de prima philosophia, 2nd ed. (1642), and other writings, presents a classic interactionist dualism. Dualism of the parallelist variety can be found in the writings of Gottfried Leibniz. Benedict De Spinoza, Ethica (1677), rejects both Materialism and dualism, expounding a double-aspect theory. George Berkeley, Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710), provides the classic statement and defense of Idealism (in his word, immaterialism). All the works above can be found in modern editions.The contemporary interest in the philosophy of mind is largely a result of the provocative work by Gilbert Ryle, Concept of Mind (1949, reprinted 1984). Also of great importance was the wholly new approach to all of philosophy taken by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philosophical Investigations, 3rd ed. (1958, reissued 1973). There followed a spate of journal articles, some of the best of which are in the following anthologies: Myles Brand (ed.), The Nature of Human Action (1970); Antony Flew (ed.), Body, Mind, and Death (1964); Donald F. Gustafson (ed.), Essays in Philosophical Psychology (1964); Harold Morick (ed.), Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind (1970, reissued 1981); George Pitcher (ed.), Wittgenstein: The Philosophical Investigations (1966); Alan R. White (ed.), The Philosophy of Action (1968, reprinted 1977); and Oscar P. Wood and George Pitcher (eds.), Ryle (1970). Another useful work is David M. Rosenthal (ed.), The Nature of Mind (1991). Selections written from Existentialist and Phenomenological perspectives are found in Stuart F. Spicker (ed.), The Philosophy of the Body (1970). M. Merleau-Ponty, Phenomenology of Perception (1989; originally published in French, 1945), is also of interest. Introductory writings that include original contributions as well as balanced assessments are Gerald E. Myers, Self (1969); Alan R. White, The Philosophy of Mind (1967, reprinted 1978); Jerome A. Shaffer, Philosophy of Mind (1968); Colin McGinn, The Character of Mind (1982); Peter Smith and O.R. Jones, The Philosophy of Mind: An Introduction (1986); Rom Harr, Physical Being: A Theory for a Corporeal Psychology (1991), on how we think about the body in everyday life; and Dale Jacquette, Philosophy of Mind (1994).Analyses of particular mental phenomena are found in G.E.M. Anscombe, Intention, 2nd ed. (1963, reissued 1976); Harvey Richard Schiffman, Sensation and Perception, 3rd ed. (1990), a good textbook; Peter Geach, Mental Acts (1956, reissued 1971); Stuart Hampshire, Thought and Action, new ed. (1982); Anthony Kenny, Action, Emotion, and Will (1963, reissued 1976); Alasdair C. MacIntyre, The Unconscious (1958, reissued 1976); Norman Malcolm, Dreaming (1959, reissued 1976); R.S. Peters, The Concept of Motivation, 2nd ed. (1969); Richard Taylor, Action and Purpose (1966, reprinted 1973); and Alan R. White, Attention (1964).Works dealing with the problem of personal identity include Harold W. Noonan, Personal Identity (1989, reissued 1993), a rigorous introduction; Peter Unger, Identity, Consciousness, and Value (1990), for specialists; A.J. Ayer, The Concept of a Person (1963); and Chris L. Kleinke, Self-Perception: The Psychology of Personal Awareness (1978). The problem of one's knowledge of other minds is explored in Harold Morick (ed.), Wittgenstein and the Problem of Other Minds (1967, reissued 1981); Alvin Plantinga, God and Other Minds (1967, reissued 1990); and John Wisdom, Other Minds, 2nd ed. (1965). A defense of dualism may be found in John Foster, The Immaterial Self (1991); and W.D. Hart, The Engines of the Soul (1988). R.J. Nelson, The Logic of Mind, 2nd ed. (1989), offers a mechanistic approach to philosophy of mind; whereas John Eccles and Daniel N. Robinson, The Wonder of Being Human: Our Brain and Our Mind (1984), poses strong opposition to the human-as-machine approach. The implications of artificial intelligence are examined in Alan Ross Anderson (ed.), Minds and Machines (1964); Hubert L. Dreyfus, What Computers Can't Do, rev. ed. (1979); Daniel C. Dennett, Brainstorms (1978; reissued 1981), and Consciousness Explained (1991); and Paul M. Churchland, The Engine of Reason, the Seat of the Soul (1995). Jerome A. Shaffer The Editors of the Encyclopdia Britannica