In the Shadow of Descartes Essays in the Philosophy of Mind

Descartes made a sharp distinction between matter and mind. But he also thought that the two interact with one another. Is such interaction possible, however, without either a materialist reduction of mind to matter or an idealist (phenomenalist) reductio

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SYNTHESE LIBRARY STUDIES IN EPISTEMOLOGY, LOGIC, METHODOLOGY, AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE

Managing Editor: JAAKKO HINTIKKA, Boston University

Editors: DIRK VAN DALEN, University ofUtrecht, The Netherlands DONALD DAVIDSON, University ofCalifornia, Berkeley THEO A.F. KUIPERS, University ofGroningen, The Netherlands PATRICK SUPPES, Stanford University, California JAN WOLENSKI, Jagiellonian University, KrakOw, Poland

VOLUME272

GEORG HENRIK VON WRIGHT Academy 01 Finland, Helsinki, and University 01 Helsinki, Finland

IN THE SHADOW OF DESCARTES Essays in the Philosophy oi Mind

Springer Science+Business Media, B.Y.

A C.I.P. Catalogue record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN 978-90-481-5011-3

ISBN 978-94-015-9034-1 (eBook)

DOI 10.1007/978-94-015-9034-1

Printed on acid-free paper

All Rights Reserved

© 1998 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht Originally published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 1998 Softcover reprint ofthe hardcover Ist edition 1998 No part of the material protected by this copyright notice may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the copyright owner

"In philosophy it is always good to put a question instead of an answer to a question. For an answer to the philosophical question may easily be unfair; disposing of it by means of another question is not. " Wittgenstein

To LilU and Fred Friends and companions in the Cartesian shadow

CONTENTS

Preliminary

ix

Of Human Freedom

1

Sensations and Perceptions

45

Thing and Quality. Substance.

69

An Essay on Door-Knocking

83

Notes on the Philosophy of Mind

97

On Mind and Matter

125

A Note on Causal Explanation of Bodily Movement and Rational Explanation of Action

149

A Note on Timing Consciousness

151

On Sound

155

Concluding Postscript. On Pain and Sound.

165

Index of Persons

171

Subject Index

173

vii

PREUMINARY

My awakening to pbilosophy took place when I was an adolescent. The flrst book I read was Psykologi by the much esteemed Swedish pbilosopher and essayist Hans Larsson. It had a section on the mind-body problem wbich put my thoughts in motion. Soon after I read Wilhelm Jerusalem's Einleitung in die Philosophie and was especially fascinated by the account it gave of the empiriocriticist form of identity theory advocated by Mach and Avenarius. I thought out for myself a "monistic phllosophy" inspired by the sources mentioned. I cannot remember my "arguments" - only that they seemed to me, at the time, "absolutely convincing". When in 1934 I started university studies in philosophy under the guidance of Eino Kalla in Helsinki, psychology was still considered to be part of "theoretical phllosophy". This meant that I also got a basic education in psychology, ineluding a rudimentary acquaintance with experimental work. I think tbis was a good preparation for research into the pbilosophy of mind or of psychology. Kalla was himself