文档介绍：Chapter 5
Mind and Body:
What Should We Believe?
Midterm review . On the mind / body problem we have so far done the
following :
. Introduced the two basic positions : dualism and materialism
. Briefly sketched the implications of each for immortality and free will
. Examined whether there is a criterion of the mental
. Laid out the main varieties of dualism
. Taken a brief look at idealism
. Sketched the main varieties of materialism , looking in some detail at
functionalism and neurophilosophy
The previous chapter gives us a plete survey of dualist and
monist positions on the mind . Now e to the key question : Of the
range of different positions , which should we believe ? Which has the
greatest likelihood of being true ? That is the topic of this chapter .
1 Why Has Dualism Had Such a Strong Appeal ?
Before we turn to that question , let ' s stand back for a minute and survey
the scene as a whole . For the past fifty years or so , most philosophers of
mind , psychologists , and other researchers working on the mind have been
materialists of one stripe or another . ( Indeed , the vast majority of them
have held the variety of materialism we earlier called FUNCTIONALISM , a
view to which we will return .) Indeed , materialism is so widely believed
nowadays that dualism is often not even taken seriously . This simple faith
in materialism makes it easy for those who hold it to forget that things
have not always been thus . Indeed , up until about 100 years ago , it
seemed clear to most people that some form of dualism had to be true ,
anyone who thought otherwise was simply ignoring some obvious facts .
Any view that seemed so obviously true to so many highly educated and
104 Mind
intelligent philosophers and psychologists is not a mere silly, simple-
minded mistake. It may (or may not) be wrong, but it is not silly or
simple-minded.
In fact, dualism was so dominant prior to about 1900 that theorists of
an