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.
