Skip to Main Content

Mental Reality

Online ISBN:
9780262259224
Print ISBN:
9780262513104
Publisher:
The MIT Press
Book

Mental Reality

Published online:
22 August 2013
Published in print:
9 October 2009
Online ISBN:
9780262259224
Print ISBN:
9780262513104
Publisher:
The MIT Press

Abstract

This book argues that much contemporary philosophy of mind gives undue primacy of place to publicly observable phenomena, nonmental phenomena, and behavioral phenomena (understood as publicly observable phenomena) in its account of the nature of mind, and does so at the expense of the phenomena of conscious experience. It describes an alternative position, “naturalized Cartesianism,” which couples the materialist view that mind is entirely natural and wholly physical with a fully realist account of the nature of conscious experience. Naturalized Cartesianism is an adductive (as opposed to reductive) form of materialism. Adductive materialists do not claim that conscious experience is anything less than we ordinarily conceive it to be, in being wholly physical. They claim instead that the physical is something more than we ordinarily conceive it to be, given that many of the wholly physical goings on in the brain constitute—literally are—conscious experiences as we ordinarily conceive them. Since naturalized Cartesianism downgrades the place of reference to nonmental and publicly observable phenomena in an adequate account of mental phenomena, the book considers in detail the question of what part such reference still has to play. It argues that it is a mistake to think that all behavioral phenomena are publicly observable phenomena.

Contents
Close
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only

Sign In or Create an Account

Close

This PDF is available to Subscribers Only

View Article Abstract & Purchase Options

For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.

Close