Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T03:03:44.963Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

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
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

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

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Anscombe, G.E.M. Intention, 2nd. ed. (Oxford: Blackwell 1963)Google Scholar
Chisholm, Roderick M. ‘On the Nature of Acquaintance: A Discussion of Russell's Theory of Knowledge,’ in Nakhnikian, George ed., Bertrand Russell's Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row 1974), 47–57Google Scholar
Davidson, Donald ‘Mental Events,’ in Foster, Lawrence & Swanson, J.W. eds. Experience & Theory (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press 1970), 79–101Google Scholar
Feigl, Herbert ‘Some Crucial Issues of Mind-Body Monism,’ Synthese, 22 (1971) 295–312CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Feigl, Herbert ‘Russell and Schlick,’ Erkenntnis, (1975) 11–34CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freud, Sigmund An Outline of Psycho-analysis (New York: Norton 1928)Google Scholar
Maxwell, Grover ‘The Later Bertrand Russell: Philosophical Revolutionary,’ in Nakhnikian, George ed., Bertrand Russell's Philosophy (New York: Harper & Row 1974), 169–82Google Scholar
Malcom, Norman Thought and Knowledge (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1977)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rosenthal, David ‘Mentality and Neutrality,’ Journal of Philosophy, 73 (1976) 386–415CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Russell, Bertrand Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (New York: Simon & Shuster 1948)Google Scholar
Thalberg, Irving ‘A Novel Approach to Mind-Brain Identity,’ Philosophical Studies, 33 (1978) 255–72CrossRefGoogle Scholar