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The Action of Mind on Body

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2022

David Randall Luce
David Randall Luce*
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota
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Abstract

Terminology and symbolism are introduced, which facilitate the precise statement of propositions concerning the action of mind on body. The minimal meaning of “the action of mind on body” is contrasted with some of the more radical interactionistic positions to be found in the literature. These more radical positions are defined in precise formulations. It is noted that radical interactionism, or “exceptionalism” as it is here called, is a contingent, empirically-decidable issue which is quite independent of metaphysical views regarding “mind” and “matter.” For that very reason it should not be the object of special philosophic concern.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , April 1960 , pp. 171 - 182
Copyright
Copyright © 1959 by Philosophy of Science Association

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References

1 The present paper is a re-working of materials developed in a dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the University of Michigan, 1957.

2 It is one of the theses developed in Herbert Feigl's essay on “The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical’,” in Vol. II of Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, ed. Feigl, Scriven, and Maxwell (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1958).

3 C. D. Broad, The Mind and Its Place in Nature (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1925), pp. 535-538.

4 G. F. Stout, Mind and Matter (Vol. I of the Gifford Lectures, Cambridge University Press, 1931), p. 73.

5 The Mind and Its Place in Nature, p. 111.

6 J. B. Pratt, Matter and Spirit (Macmillan, N. Y., 1922), p. 87.

7 Matter and Spirit, pp. 136-142.

8 Bertrand Russell, “On the Notion of Cause,” in Mysticism and Logic (Allen & Unwin, London, 1918), p. 200.

9 The Mind and Its Place in Nature, p. 131.

10 Bertrand Russell, The Analysis of Mind (Allen & Unwin, London, 1921.)

11 William James, The Principles of Psychology (Henry Holt & Co., N. Y., 1890), Vol. I, Ch. V.

12 The Principles of Psychology, Vol. I, pp. 3, 5.

13 The cerebroscope is a device which fits over a person's skull and portrays on a screen lines and shadows which represent the pattern of neural activities taking place within that skull. The autocerebroscope allows one skilled in the use of the machine to correlate the events going on in his brain with his thoughts and feelings. The usefulness of such a device is described by Herbert Feigl in his article “The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical.‘”