ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book attempts a reappraisal and reclamation of the concepts of self, subjectivity, and interiority with a view to defending them against not only standard critiques by behaviourists, Wittgensteinians, etc, but also against the influential critiques offered by European theorists of the subject such as Lacan and Foucault. The aim is not to defend Descartes on the grounds that his views are correct but on the grounds that too much has been imputed to him, with the result that too many concepts have been found objectionable because they have been interpreted as Cartesian. In short, the book is a critique of the indiscriminate anti-Cartesianism of contemporary philosophy of mind. It is, in particular, a detailed querying of the wisdom of a materialist approach which would eliminate the concepts of mind, self and interiority in the name of the elimination of the Cartesian ontology.
