ABSTRACT

In the thirteen preceding chapters we have examined a host of distinct perspectives on the mind. Each of these perspectives originally crystallized in response to a particular range of puzzles. Descartes, for instance, was struck by apparent differences between properties of material objects and mental properties. That focus led him to regard the mental properties and the material properties as properties of utterly different kinds of substance. Behaviorists, in contrast, were bent on making minds scientifically respectable subjects of empirical inquiry. Given their conception of scientific respectability, this meant showing that truths about minds and their contents could be paraphrased in terms of observable bodily motions and propensities to such motions.