Kant’s Perspectival Solution to the Mind-Body Problem

2016 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 194-213
Author(s):  
Stephen R. Palmquist
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Early Career ◽  
Good Science ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
Critical Theories ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
Spatio Temporal ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Causal Nexus

Kant’s Critical philosophy solves Descartes’ mind-body problem, replacing the dualism of the “physical influx” theory he defended in his early career. Kant’s solution, like all Critical theories, is “perspectival,” acknowledging deep truth in both opposing extremes. Minds are not separate from bodies, but a manifestation of them, each viewed from a different perspective. Kant’s transcendental conditions of knowledge portray the mind not as creating the physical world, but as necessarily structuring our knowledge of objects with a set of unconscious assumptions; yet our pre-conscious (pre-mental) encounter with an assumed spatio-temporal, causal nexus is entirely physical. Hence, today’s “eliminative materialism” and “folk psychology” are both ways of considering this age-old issue, neither being an exclusive explanation. A Kantian solution to this version of the mind-body problem is: eliminative materialism is good science; but only folk psychologists can consistently be eliminative materialists. Indeed, the mind-body problem exemplifies a feature of all cultural situations: dialogue between opposing perspectives is required for understanding as such to arise.

scholarly journals A quasi-materialist, quasi-dualist solution to the mind-body problem

2004 ◽  
Vol 45 (109) ◽  
pp. 81-135
Author(s):  
John-Michael Kuczynski
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Sense Perception ◽  
Phenomenal Properties ◽  
Essential Properties ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
Physical Objects ◽  
The Mind

If the mental can affect, or be affected by, the physical, then the mental must itself be physical. Otherwise the physical world would not be explanatorily closed. But it is closed. There are reasons to hold that materialism (in both its reductive and non-reductive varieties) is false. So how are we to explain the apparent responsiveness of the physical to the mental and vice versa? The only possible solution seems to be this: physical objects are really projections or isomorphs of objects whose essential properties are mental. (A slightly less accurate way of putting this would be to say: the constitutive - i.e. the non-structural and non-phenomenal - properties of physical objects are mental, i.e. are such as we are used to encountering only in "introspection".) The chair, qua thing that I can know through sense perception, and through hypotheses based strictly thereupon, is a kind of shadow of an object that is exactly like it, except that this other objects essential properties are mental. This line of thought, though radically counterintuitive, explains the apparent responsiveness of the mental to the physical, and vice versa, without being open to any of the criticisms to which materialism, dualistic interaction ism, and epiphenomenalism are open.

scholarly journals The dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience: what does philosophy of mind say?

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 186-192 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elie Cheniaux ◽  
Carlos Eduardo de Sousa Lyra
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Current Knowledge ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Subjective Experiences ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
Brain States ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

Objective: To briefly review how the main monist and dualist currents of philosophy of mind approach the mind-body problem and to describe their association with arguments for and against a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.Methods: The literature was reviewed for studies in the fields of psychology, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, and philosophy of mind.Results: Some currents are incompatible with a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neurosciences: interactionism and psychophysical parallelism, because they do not account for current knowledge about the brain; epiphenomenalism, which claims that the mind is a mere byproduct of the brain; and analytical behaviorism, eliminative materialism, reductive materialism and functionalism, because they ignore subjective experiences. In contrast, emergentism claims that mental states are dependent on brain states, but have properties that go beyond the field of neurobiology.Conclusions: Only emergentism is compatible with a closer dialog between psychoanalysis and neuroscience.

Consciousness as Existence, and the End of Intentionality

2001 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Ted Honderich
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Formal Logic ◽  
Philosophical Psychology ◽  
The Core ◽  
The Past ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Past Millennium

It was only in the last century of the past millennium that the Philosophy of Mind began to flourish as a part of philosophy with some autonomy, enough for students to face examination papers in it by itself. Despite an inclination in some places to give it the name of Philosophical Psychology, it is not any science of the mind. This is not to say that the Philosophy of Mind is unempirical, but that it is like the rest of philosophy in being more taken up with good thinking about experienced facts than with establishing, elaborating or using them. Logic, if not formal logic, is the core of all philosophy, and so of the Philosophy of Mind. The discipline's first question is what it is for a thing to be conscious, whatever its capabilities. The discipline's second question is how a thing's being conscious is related to the physical world, including chairs, brains and bodily movements—the mind-brain or mind-body problem.

scholarly journals The revisability of commonsense psychology

2010 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 53-61
Author(s):  
Nada Gligorov
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Body Problem ◽  
Empirical Theory ◽  
Eliminative Materialism ◽  
False Theory ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind

Various views of the mind/body problem adopt one of the two general strategies towards explaining phenomena: one approach is to take into account the intuitions found in common sense, and the second is to go against those intuitions. The first type of theory attempts to ground views of particular phenomena on our common sense. Eliminative Materialism (EM) is not such an approach. EM urges that commonsense psychology is false and should be replaced by neuroscience. Eliminativism has often been challenged. Some have attacked the premise that commonsense psychology is a theory; others have attacked the claim that it is a false theory, which can be replaced. I plan to countenance the argument that commonsense psychology is an empirical theory that can be replaced, which will, surprisingly, lead me to an argument against eliminativism. My view is that commonsense psychology cannot be eliminated because there are no commonsense theories.

The Mind-Body Problem Revisited

1975 ◽  
Vol 20 (8) ◽  
pp. 660-660
Author(s):  
MADGE SCHEIBEL ◽  
ARNOLD SCHEIBEL
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Mind

Zombies and Dolls

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcello Massimini ◽  
Giulio Tononi
Keyword(s):  
Body Problem ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Turing Test ◽  
Hard Problem ◽  
Mind Body Problem ◽  
The Hard Problem ◽  
The Mind ◽  
The Brain

This chapter uses thought experiments and practical examples to introduce, in a very accessible way, the hard problem of consciousness. Soon, machines may behave like us to pass the Turing test and scientists may succeed in copying and simulating the inner workings of the brain. Will all this take us any closer to solving the mysteries of consciousness? The reader is taken to meet different kind of zombies, the philosophical, the digital, and the inner ones, to understand why many, scientists and philosophers alike, doubt that the mind–body problem will ever be solved.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document