Mental Philosophy

Email

Whatsapp

Facebook

Pinterest

Twitter

Copy link

Mental Philosophy is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology, nature, and relationship of the mind to the body. Aspects of the mind that are studied include mental events, mental functions, mental properties, consciousness, the ontology of the mind, the nature of thought, and the relationship of the mind to the body. The main aim of philosophers working in this area is to determine the nature of the mind and mental states/processes, and how-oreven if-minds are affected by and can affect the body. The book explains all aspects of mental philosophy in simple language.

Aniruddh Jha is a Professor of Philosophy, University of Hyderabad. He achieved his degrees M.A. (Philosophy) and PhD (Moral Values of Hinduism in Veda) from BHU, Varanasi. He has worked extensively on Vedic philosophy, Classical Indian Philosophy, Contemporary Indian Philosophy, Comparative Religion and Buddhism. He has authored several spiritual books. He has authored more than twenty research papers and articles published in national and international journals. He has travelled all over India to teach Indian Religion & Philosophy.

At a time when many introductory books on the philosophy of mind are available, it would be fair to ask me why I have written another one. I have at least two answers to this question. One is that some of the more recent introductions to this subject have been rather narrow in their focus, tending to concentrate upon the many different isms' that have emerged of late- reductionism, functionalism, eliminative-ism, instrumentalism, non-reductive physicalize and so forth, all of them divisible into further sub-varieties. Another is that I am disturbed by the growing tendency to present the subject in a quasi-scientific way, as though the only proper role for philosophers of mind is to act as junior part-nears within the wider community of cognitive scientists.

It may be true that philosophers of an earlier generation were unduly dismissive -and, indeed, ignorant- of empirical psychology and neuroscience, but now there is a danger that the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction. Perhaps it will be thought that my two answers are in con-flit with one another, inasmuch as the current obsession with the different 'isms does at least appear to indicate an interest in themetaphysicsof mind, a distinctly philosophical enterprise.

But there is no real conflict here, because much of the so-called 'metaphysics in contemporary philosophy of mind is really rather lightweight, often having only a tenuous relation to serious foundational work in ontology. In fact, most of the current "isms in the philosophy of mind are gen-rated by the need felt by their advocates to propound and justify a broadlyphysicalistaccount of the mind and its capa-xicities, on the questionable assumption that this alone can render talk about the mind scientifically respectable. Many of the esoteric disputes between philosophers united by this common assumption have arisen simply because it is very unclear just what physicalize in the philosophy of mind really entails.

In the chapters that follow, I shall try not to let that relatively sterile issue dominate and distort our philosophical inquiries. This book is aimed primarily at readers who have already benefited from a basic grounding in philosophical argument and analysis and are beginning to concentrate in more detail upon specific areas of philosophy, in this case the philosophy of mind.

**Contents and Sample Pages**