Can Ockham's razor cut through the mind-body problem? A critical examination of Churchland's "Raze dualism" argument for materialism.

This book is a defense, against mostly philosophical objections, of a Chomskyan postulation of an internal, innate computational system for human language that is typically manifested in native speaker’s intuitive responses to samples of speech. But it is also a critical examination of some of the glosses on the theory: the assimilation of it to traditional Rationalism; a supposed conflict between being innate and learned; an unclear ontology which requires what I call a “representational pretense” (whereby linguists merely pretend for the sake of exposition that, e.g., tokens of words are uttered); and, most crucially to my concerns, Chomsky’s specific eliminativism about the role of intentionality not only in his own theories, but in any serious science at all. This last is a fundamentally important issue for linguistics, psychology, and philosophy that I hope an examination of a theory as rich and promising as a Chomskyan linguistics will help illuminate. I will also touch on some peripheral issues that Chomsky seems to me to mistakenly associate with his theory: an anti-realism about ordinary thought and talk, and a peculiar dismissal of the mind/body problem(s), toward the solution of some of which I think his theory actually makes a promising contribution.

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The Mind-Body Problem Revisited

Contemporary Psychology ◽

10.1037/0013579 ◽

1975 ◽

Vol 20 (8) ◽

pp. 660-660

Author(s):

MADGE SCHEIBEL ◽

ARNOLD SCHEIBEL

Keyword(s):

Body Problem ◽

Mind Body Problem ◽

The Mind

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Zombies and Dolls

10.1093/oso/9780198728443.003.0002 ◽

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.

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Brute Necessity and the Mind–Body Problem

10.1093/oso/9780198758600.003.0005 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

James Van Cleve

Keyword(s):

Body Problem ◽

Necessary Truths ◽

Mind Body Problem ◽

The Mind

In a growing number of papers one encounters arguments to the effect that certain philosophical views are objectionable because they would imply that there are necessary truths for whose necessity there is no explanation. For short, they imply that there are brute necessities. Therefore, the arguments conclude, the views in question should be rejected in favor of rival views under which the necessities would be explained. This style of argument raises a number of questions. Do necessary truths really require explanation? Are they not paradigms of truths that either need no explanation or automatically have one, being in some sense self-explanatory? If necessary truths do admit of explanation or even require it, what types of explanation are available? Are there any necessary truths that are truly brute? This chapter surveys various answers to these questions, noting their bearing on arguments from brute necessity and arguments concerning the mind–body problem.

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