Outline notes, suitable for AS/A2 level students, are available on:

• Aristotle: body and soul

just click on the 'Notes' link above to see the pdf file

There is a chapter on The Philosophy of Mind, written by David Rothenberg of the New Jersey Institute of Technology, in World Philosophy. In it he considers how mind and body are related, issues concerning artificial intelligence, and also examines both Hindu and Zen approaches to mind.

The Philosophy of Mind is a fascinating area of study. It concerns fundamental questions about the nature of the self, issues of how our minds and our bodies interact, and the broader questions about the nature of consciousness.  It links to science, in that we experience ourselves as free and outside the series of physical causes that might suggest that everything is completely determined on the physical level. It links also with religion, in that many religious people believe in some form of life after death or reincarnation. Does that make any sense? is disembodied life possible? How does it relate to our idea of what it is to be a person.

The nature of consciousness is one of the key areas of exploration in the Philosophy of Mind. Indeed, once we stop to think about it (and we don't do that very often, because being conscious is such a natural thing that we accept it uncritically), the whole relationship between being conscious of something and the thing of which we are conscious is a curious thing. Is consciousness something that is simply going on in the brain - and therefore something that will be explained completely as neuroscience becomes more specific about brain functioning? Huge numbers of questions crop up once you start to unpack these things.

 

Ryle's is the classic, oft-quoted text on logical behaviourism. You may not like his conclusions, but in terms of clarity of thought and lucid argument, his book takes a lot of beating. Famous for arguing that to mix physical and mental descriptions, or causes, as though they could simply be set alongside one another as a  'category mistake', and for caricaturing Descartes' dualistic view of the self as ' the ghost in the machine',  this book helps to clarify exactly what we mean when we call an action 'intelligent', or 'wise'. But don't be totally taken in, for Ryle really does no more that substitute a 'ghost in the machine' for a 'ghost in the action', or that's my view. See what you think.

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

For a readable and easy introduction to some of these issues, along with my own personal view about what it means to develop a sense of 'me', see Me.