The Mind and its World

by McCulloch,Gregory

• ISBN13: 9780415093309
• ISBN10: 0415093309
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1995-06-13
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Since Descartes, the mind has been thought to be "in the head," separable from the world and even from the body it inhabits. InThe Mind and its World, Gregory McCulloch considers the latest debates in philosophy and cognitive science about whether the thinking subject actually requires an environment in order to be able to think. McCulloch explores the mind/body duality from the Enlightenment to the 20th century. He examines such figures as Descartes, Frege, Locke, and Wittgenstein. His method is comparative, and his insights are illuminating. By pitting Descartes against such thinkers as Wittgenstein and Frege, McCulloch produces a dynamic account of the implications of the Descartian argument about consciousness and the mind. The contrast evolves into McCulloch's original theory of externalism, the notion that the mind is not in the head, and is constituted by environmental, and linguistic object relations. The Mind and its Worldis a clearand compelling reading of the one of the dominant elements and debates within Western philosophy. Its synthesis of the arguments and controversies will make this book necessary reading for the general reader who is interested in the claims the Enlightenment and its aftermath have made about consciousness, our "minds", and even our brains._

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements	x
Introduction	xi
PART I
Descartes and Cartesianism	3	(23)
Cartesian Dualism	3	(2)
Mind-Body relations	5	(4)
Epistemology	9	(2)
Self-containedness and Exteriority	11	(1)
Mind, consciousness, language	11	(11)
Cartesianism	22	(4)
Notes and reading	23	(3)
Locke and the Theory of Ideas	26	(31)
Ideas: some distinctions	27	(5)
Idea, word, object	32	(5)
Ideas and resemblances	37	(2)
Primary and secondary	39	(4)
Resemblance, representation, sensation	43	(10)
Mind and language	53	(4)
Notes and reading	54	(3)
Frege and the Theory of Understanding	57	(22)
Idealism and realism	57	(3)
Idea, sense, meaning	60	(3)
The theory of sense	63	(5)
Frege against ideas	68	(11)
Notes and reading	75	(4)
Wittgenstein: Use and Understanding	79	(30)
Understanding as static	80	(8)
Definitions and family resemblance	88	(4)
Dynamism in the theory of understanding	92	(4)
Thought, talk, self-containedness	96	(3)
Naturalism and normativity	99	(10)
Notes and reading	107	(2)
Behaviourism and Mentalism	109	(22)
Behaviourism	110	(1)
Mentalism	111	(5)
Scientific psychology and `folk psychology'	116	(8)
Contemporary Cartesianism	124	(7)
Notes and reading	127	(4)
PART II
What it is Really Like	131	(28)
Ideas: communication again	132	(2)
Ideas: phenomenology of body and of mind	134	(4)
Concepts and the fabric of experience	138	(2)
Embodiment	140	(9)
Phenomenology of mind: communication	149	(6)
Where does this leave Cartesianism?	155	(4)
Notes and reading	156	(3)
Twin Earth	159	(25)
Stereotype and essence	159	(7)
Twin Earth and Exteriority	166	(6)
Positivism and realism	172	(3)
Embellishments	175	(9)
Notes and reading	181	(3)
Internalism and Externalism	184	(41)
Methodological solipsism	184	(3)
Internalism and Externalism	187	(4)
The semantic and the cognitive	191	(5)
Wide and narrow content	196	(7)
Vat-brains	203	(4)
Explaining behaviour (1)	207	(4)
Explaining behaviour (2)	211	(3)
Self-containedness again	214	(3)
Naturalism and scientism: a sting in the tail?	217	(8)
Notes and reading	220	(5)
Index	225