Mind, Matter, and Nature

Preface: Another Opinionated Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind

ix Preface Another Opinionated Introduction to the Philosophy of Mind We are not exactly suffering our way through a dearth of introductory books covering the philosophy of mind in the current academic and popular market. Many of these books are very helpful, leaving little room for improvement, and you will find that I cite some of them in this book. A few fairly common, though not universal, deficiencies in these books have moved me to write Mind, Matter, and Nature: A Thomistic Proposal for the Philosophy of Mind. Introductory texts in the philosophy of mind tend to take materialism, or at least some broad version of naturalism, as a default position. Even in those cases in which nonmaterialist philosophies are considered, this treatment rarely goes beyond a brief examination of Descartes’s arguments in the Meditations, which are usually quickly dismissed by appeal to scientific progress or supposedly insurmountable problems of mind-brain interaction. The implication is often that we contemporaries just know better than to fall for something so silly as to believe in an immaterial soul. Such a hasty dismissal is unfair to Descartes and dualists in general, as there are arguments offered by contemporary philosophers, often inspired by Descartes, that go a long way toward supporting mind-body dualism. Moreover, even when materialism is not simply presumed from the beginning, it is still common to accept the uniquely modern dichotomy between materialism and Cartesian dualism. The fact that there is a long history of philosophizing, that is, the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition, that can be characterized as nei- x PREFACE ther materialist nor dualist is frequently either blithely ignored or summarily dismissed as a prescientific bit of superstition. Introductions to the philosophy of mind by those sympathetic to the Aristotelian-Thomistic tradition are not always free from myopia of their own. Some Thomists tend to ignore the insights that contemporary analytic philosophy offers us in the philosophy of mind, and one also encounters some rather quick dismissals of both materialism and dualism. Moreover, when such books are conversant with contemporary philosophy of mind, they tend to try to fit Aristotelian-Thomism into the categories of such philosophizing . I believe that this maneuver, though well intentioned, has done much to motivate the charges of ambiguity and ad hoc gerrymandering that are often leveled against contemporary Thomists. My intention in writing this book has been to avoid these pitfalls. I do not take philosophical naturalism as a default position , nor do I assume that our only options are Cartesian dualism and materialism. David Armstrong calls his book in which he gives an accessible defense of materialism The Mind-Body Problem : An Opinionated Introduction, and like him I present an opinionated introduction to the philosophy of mind, though from a very different perspective. Specifically, I argue that a broadly Aristotelian-Thomistic understanding of mind is our most viable option, even in light of the very best insights that contemporary analytic philosophy has to offer. This position, however, cannot be taken merely as a philosophy of mind, but rather as an application of a comprehensive metaphysics or philosophy of nature that endeavors to make sense of physical beings in general. Otherwise , I argue, Thomism does give every appearance of playing on obscurities. Even though it is an opinionated introduction, this book is still an introduction to the philosophy of mind, and it is largely built out of materials I have used teaching undergraduate students. In chapter 1, I briefly introduce the reader to the philosophical nat- xi PREFACE uralism that dominates contemporary thinking about the mind and the problems it raises. In chapter 2 and chapter 3, I consider the arguments for and against dualism in some detail. In chapter 4 and chapter 5, I present the basic project that contemporary materialists set for themselves and the typical criticisms of their positions. In chapter 6, I consider emergentist versions of naturalism . Throughout these chapters I refer the reader to some of the most influential literature on the mind-body problem, and, when possible, I cite these articles as they appear in anthologies typically used in philosophy of mind courses. Thus, the reader of these chapters can expect to survey the basic lay of the land in contemporary philosophy of mind, and this material should fit in well with many of the sources typically read in undergraduate courses covering these issues. In chapter 7, I argue that all of these various...