ABSTRACT
Introduction I propose to pay my respects to Leonard Nelson, whose 100th birthday falls this year, by presenting my own understanding of the relevance of his work to the philosophy of mind. The critical method, to which Nelson was committed, attracts me, as a psychologist, because of its applications to research methodology as well as to the formation of theories about functions of the human mind and body. I see great benefits for both psychology and philosophy if they could pool their present knowledge to concentrate on the problem of which human faculties and capabilities are really the most basic ones. Even today, many theorists go back to Aristotle, Aquinas and Hume and adopt their views seemingly without taking account of how much more complex processes like perception and cognition are than these savants could possibly have known. As a result anyone working in the fields of social science, in education, psychiatry or any of the other applied human sciences must be utterly confused by contradictory theories and thus in urgent need of upto-date conceptual frameworks.
