This book presents a strong case for substance dualism and offers a comprehensive defense of the knowledge argument, showing that materialism cannot accommodate or explain the 'hard problem' of consciousness. Bringing together the discussion of reductionism and semantic vagueness in an original and illuminating way, Howard Robinson argues that non-fundamental levels of ontology are best treated by a conceptualist account, rather than a realist one. In addition to discussing the standard versions of physicalism, he examines physicalist theories such as those of McDowell and Price, and accounts of neutral monism and panpsychism from Strawson, McGinn and Stoljar. He also explores previously unnoticed historical parallels between Frege and Aristotle and between Hume and Plotinus. His book will be a valuable resource for scholars and advanced students of philosophy of mind, in particular those looking at consciousness, dualism, and the mind-body problem.
In this paper I hope to show that a particular modern approach to Aristotle's philosophy of mind is untenable and, out of that negative discussion, develop some tentative suggestions concerning the interpretation of two famous and puzzling Aristotelian maxims. These maxims are, first, that the soul is the form of the body and, second, that perception is the reception of form without matter.The fashionable interpretation of Aristotle which I wish to criticize is the attempt to assimilate him to certain modern philosophies of mind by making him into a functionalist. I shall therefore begin by explaining this modern term of art
Arguments specifically for and against idealism are arguments about the nature of the physical world, not about the nature of mind. This creates a problem for a would-be author of an entry on idealism, in a collection on the philosophy of mind, if he wishes to do justice both to the topic of his chapter and to the theme of the book as a whole. This article tries to resolve this conflict. Arguments for idealism usually take the form of attempted refutations of physical realism. They therefore tend to take the form of trying to prove that, in one way or another, the existence of material objects depends directly on the existence and activity of minds, other than that of the divine creator in his act of creating.
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