Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Introducing Your Mind - Feser on Philosophy of Mind

I found Edward Feser's The Philosophy of Mind: A Short Introduction to be a wonderful introduction to philosophy of mind that makes clear the intersection this area of philosophy has to other important areas. Feser winds his way through the contemporary debate and approaches to the mind-body problem, not at all neglecting the historical development of these positions, making for a guided tour that is anything but mentally unengaging.

About halfway to two thirds of the way through the book, I realized Feser was purposefully guiding me somewhere, constructing and framing the debate with some definitive design; and in the end (though already being familiar with Feser, I expected this), he makes a none-too-veiled pitch for a Thomistic approach to dualism, cleverly presenting its advantages to several of the important challenges Cartesian dualism faces if it is to clearly (or cleanly) overcome materialism, not to mention convince materialists. He leaves the reader--or he left me, anyway--wanting to next pick up a book on Thomism. (Conveniently, he's written such a book!)

P.s. I wish I'd had this book back when I wrote my paper defending a dualistic approach to the mind-body problem!

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