Philosophy of mind

Stefaan E. Cuypers
Table of contents

In contradistinction to both classical ‘armchair’ philosophy of mind and ‘a priori’ ordinary language philosophy of mind, and in spite of some forceful attempts to reverse this trend (e.g. Searle 1992), contemporary philosophy of mind is largely naturalized. Whereas the older forms of philosophy of mind were based upon the methods of introspection and conceptual analysis, recent philosophy of mind draws heavily upon the empirical methods and ‘objective’ findings of the sciences. The present link of philosophy of mind especially to psychology, neurophysiology, artificial intelligence and linguistics establishes it among the other cognitive sciences. Adopting a general scientistic outlook and, in particular, the naturalistic ontology this entails, excludes spiritualistic dualism — of whatever kind — as a possible theory of the mind from the start. The only viable frame of research for an investigation of the mind compatible with a scientific and naturalistic worldview is materialistic monism or — to use the current term — physicalism. It follows that most contemporary studies of the nature and typical aspects of the mind — consciousness and intentionality — are constrained by a minimal ontological commitment to the physical stuff of physics, chemistry and neurophysiology. It is this trend that I will focus on.

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