The MindBody Problem, Jonathan Westphal
The MindBody Problem, Jonathan Westphal
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The Mind-Body Problem

Author: Jonathan Westphal

Narrator: Sean Pratt

Unabridged: 5 hr

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Ascent Audio

Published: 10/01/2016


Synopsis

Philosophers from Descartes to Kripke have struggled with the glittering prize of modern and contemporary philosophy: the mind-body problem. The brain is physical. If the mind is physical, we cannot see how. If we cannot see how the mind is physical, we cannot see how it can interact with the body. And if the mind is not physical, it cannot interact with the body. Or so it seems.

In this book the philosopher Jonathan Westphal examines the mind-body problem in detail, laying out the reasoning behind the solutions that have been offered in the past and presenting his own proposal. The sharp focus on the mind-body problem, a problem that is not about the self, or consciousness, or the soul, or anything other than the mind and the body, helps clarify both problem and solutions. Westphal outlines the history of the mind-body problem, beginning with Descartes. He describes mind-body dualism, which claims that the mind and the body are two different and separate things, nonphysical and physical, and he also examines physicalist theories of mind; antimaterialism, which proposes limits to physicalism and introduces the idea of qualia; and scientific theories of consciousness.

Finally, Westphal examines the largely forgotten neutral monist theories of mind and body, held by Ernst Mach, William James, and Bertrand Russell, which attempt neither to extract mind from matter nor to dissolve matter into mind. Westphal proposes his own version of neutral monism. This version is unique among neutral monist theories in offering an account of mind-body interaction.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Kunal

This is the first book I have read on this subject that attempts to organize all the philosophical and scientific work that has been done on the topic of mind-body problem, and the associated topic of consciousness, in a systematic way. It does a wonderful job of first establishing a framework, and......more

Goodreads review by Teo

I'm not so sure I would recommend this book to a non-philosophy student. On the one hand, it's a fairly good summation of the attempts to resolve the problem dating back to Descartes; on the other, it is important to be able to appreciate the rigidity of some of the rules of logic to appreciate the c......more

Goodreads review by Kieran

I have to be honest this book was hard to get through. I don't know if it's just that I found the topic uninteresting, or the book itself but I found it a chore to finish. It was hard to keep everything straight throughout reading because multiple ideas are presented in a single sub-heading on each......more

Goodreads review by Greg

Excellent overview, but sub-optimal production Westphal's explication of the mind-body problem is as serviceable an overview as I've yet experienced (and I've read a lot). The only thing better would be a proper university lecture series. I especially appreciated the syllogistic reductions in key cha......more