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An Epistemic Criterion of the Mental

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Arnold B. Levison
Arnold B. Levison*
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina at Greensboro
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Extract

‘When we see, hear, smell, taste, feel, meditate, or will anything, we know that we do so. … Consciousness … is inseparable from thinking, and essential to it. …’

John Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (II, 27)

‘Psycho-analysis … cannot accept the identity of the conscious and the mental. It defines what is mental as processes such as feeling, thinking and … willing. … ’

Sigmund Freud, Introductory Lectures on Psycho-analysis (Lecture 1 ).

In this paper I shall provide a novel version of a traditional epistemic criterion for distinguishing mental entities from nonmental ones, and defend it from likely sorts of objections. By the phrase ‘criterion of the mental’ I mean a set of conditions which is necessary and sufficient for an entity's being mental (or psychological).

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 13 , Issue 3 , September 1983 , pp. 389 - 407
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1983

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