ABSTRACT
We all take ourselves and our fellow human beings to have minds. But what exactly is it to ‘have a mind’? e question is one with which philosophers and non-philosophers have struggled throughout recorded history. According to some, minds are spiritual entities, souls that temporarily reside in bodies, entering at birth (or maybe at conception) and departing on death. Indeed, death is just a soul’s taking leave of a body. Others imagine the relation between minds and bodies to be more intimate. Minds, they hold, are not entities. Minds resemble sts or laps: a mind is present when a body is organized in a particular way, and absent otherwise. A mind ceases to exist on the death of the body because the body’s internal structure breaks down. Still others hold that minds are indeed entities, physical entities: minds are brains.
