The importance of the decision one makes about where an inquiry is to begin can hardly be overestimated. That decision sets the character of the questions to be addressed; and by laying down the terms in which they are formulated, it can even carry an implicit commitment to a certain kind of answer to those questions. In the philosophy of mind especially, the terminology traditionally used to describe mental phenomena is so rich in presuppositions that once it is introduced, it seems to guide the inquiry so initiated along preordained paths to familiar conclusions. Even so, it is not easy to see how a completely fresh start could be made. If new language were simply introduced at the outset for the purpose of replacing old formulations, the relationship of these new questions to the ones that were raised in the old terminology would be at best problematic. As a result, in order to show what has been achieved by this reform, it would be necessary to explain the relevance of these new kinds of questions and answers to the matters discussed in the superseded idiom. To do this, however, would be to effect a rapprochement, however provisional, between the old and the new terminology and to surrender the hope for a completely new start.

It is necessary, then, to begin with the vocabulary of “mind” and the “mental” that has traditionally been used to render the aspect of human nature with which this book is concerned.