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The Relation Between Mind and Body as a Problem for the Philosopher1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

A. C. Ewing
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge.

Extract

This article must open with a Warning. In face of the positive information which the sciences supply, the philosophical contribution to this problem will seem disappointingly negative, or at least mine will do so. For I shall insist, and I think we can only rightly insist, that the philosopher is not yet in a position to produce a satisfactory positive theory of the relation between mind and body. And I shall annoy many of you further by insisting that the old-fashioned “dualism” has not really been disproved. However, even if you do not agree with me, it is at any rate a good general piece of advice that, when we are confronted with a philosophical view which has maintained its ground for a very long time but seems to ourselves or to our generation very unreasonable, we should look specially carefully to find the positive grounds which have made so apparently unplausible a doctrine seem true to so many competent thinkers.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1954

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References

page 115 note 1 Everything that I say in what follows will hold whether we take mind to be one substance with the body as a whole or only with the brain or part of the brain.

page 119 note 1 In his book. The Concept of Mind.