Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book examines the Descartes's mind-body dualism—a dualism of material things and immaterial minds. It discusses some specific philosophical problems about sensations and intentional states. Materialism is the doctrine that all things that exist in the world are bits of matter or aggregates of bits of matter. Physicalism is the contemporary successor to materialism. Another epistemic feature sometimes associated with mentality is the idea that in some sense the students' knowledge of their own current mental states is "infallible" or "incorrigible", or that it is "self-intimating". Infallibility and transparency are extremely strong properties. It would be no surprise if physical events and states did not have them; a more interesting question is whether all or even most mental events satisfy them. For Descartes, is that the mental is essentially nonspatial and the material is essentially lacking in the capacity for thinking.