For readers who might be interested, I thought it would be useful to gather together in one place links to various posts on the mind-body problem and other issues in the philosophy of mind. Like much of what you’ll find on this blog, these posts develop and apply ideas and arguments stated more fully in my various books and articles. Naturally, I address various issues in the philosophy of mind at length in my book Philosophy of Mind, of which you can find a detailed table of contents here. (The cover illustration by Andrzej Klimowski you see to the left is from the first edition.) You will find my most recent and detailed exposition of the Aristotelian-Thomistic (A-T) approach to issues in the philosophy of mind in chapter 4 of Aquinas. There is a lot of material on the mind-body problem to be found in The Last Superstition, especially in various sections of the last three chapters. And there is also relevant material to be found in Locke, in the chapter I contributed to my edited volume The Cambridge Companion to Hayek, and in various academic articles.
On to the posts. For an account of what the mind-body problem is and how the A-T tradition tends to approach it, see:
It is widely assumed that materialist explanations have succeeded in every other area of inquiry, that it is only a matter of time before the mind also succumbs to such explanation, and that progress in neuroscience supports this judgment. I maintain that none of these claims is true and that the contemporary presumption in favor of materialism rests on various philosophical confusions, sleight of hand, and historical ignorance. I develop the theme in general terms in the following posts:
I address the specific claim that the findings of modern neuroscience vindicate materialism in these posts:
Much of what contemporary materialist philosophers have to say in criticism of dualism rests on egregious distortions and/or ignorance of what dualist philosophers have actually said. A good example of this tendency is provided by the work of Paul Churchland, as I have demonstrated at length in a series of posts:
I discuss a number of arguments in favor of dualism in another series of posts:
Discussions of the ideas and arguments of some historically influential anti-materialist thinkers can be found here:
Problems with Cartesian forms of dualism (which I reject) are discussed in the following posts:
"Two, four, six, eight! Who do you reincarnate?"
Defenses of Thomistic or hylemorphic dualism (which I endorse) can be found in the following posts:
How to animate a corpse [on Cartesian versus Aristotelian conceptions of the soul]
Discussion of issues surrounding intentionality can be found in several posts:
Defenses of Thomistic or hylemorphic dualism (which I endorse) can be found in the following posts:
Discussion of issues surrounding intentionality can be found in several posts:
"Coyne on intentionality"
A lengthy discussion of qualia and Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument can be found here:
A lengthy discussion of qualia and Frank Jackson’s knowledge argument can be found here:
Criticism of eliminative materialism can be found in a series of posts on Alex Rosenberg:
“Misinformation campaign”
Reading Rosenberg, Part IX [on eliminative materialism in Rosenberg’s The Atheist’s Guide to Reality]
Reading Rosenberg, Part IX [on eliminative materialism in Rosenberg’s The Atheist’s Guide to Reality]
The ideas of various other contemporary philosophers of mind are considered in the following:
Finally, links to various posts on scientism (which is closely related to materialism) can be found here.
