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Science, Analysis, And The Problem Of Mind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Roland Puccetti
Affiliation:
American University of Beirut

Extract

For the general terms in which the scientists have set their problem of mind and body, we philosophers have been chiefly to blame …The legend that we have told and sold runs like this. A person consists of two theatres, one bodily and one non-bodily. In his Theatre A go on the incidents which we can explore by eye and instrument.But a person also incorporates a second theatre, Theatre B. Here there go on incidents which are totally unlike, though synchronised with those that go on in Theatre A. These Theatre B episodes are changes in the states, not of bits of flesh, but of something called ‘consciousness’, which occupies no space. Only the proprietor of Theatre B has firsthand knowledge of what goes on in it. It is a secret theatre … No, what prevents us from examining Theatre B is not that it has no doors and windows but that there is no such theatre.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1964

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References

page 249 note 1 The Physical Basis of Mind, edited by Laslett, P., 1957, pp. 76 and 78.Google Scholar

page 249 note 2 Quoted by Koestler, A. in Pavlov in Retreat, The Observer, London, 04 23, 1961.Google Scholar

page 250 note 1 Laslett, , op. cit., p. 3.Google Scholar

page 250 note 2 Ibid., p.5.

page 250 note 3 Ibid., p.64.

page 251 note 1 Koestler, , op. cit.Google Scholar

page 251 note 2 Laslett, , op. cit., p. 73.Google Scholar

page 253 note 1 Ibid., p.70.

page 254 note 1 Ibid., p.74.

page 254 note 2 Cf. his Sensations and Brain Processes (Philosophical Review, 04, 1959).Google Scholar

page 255 note 1 Cf. his Materialism as a Scientific Hypothesis (Philosophical Review, 01, 1960).Google Scholar

page 255 note 2 Cf. his Concept of Mind, especially ChapterII.Google Scholar

page 256 note 1 Cf. Laslett, op. cit.Google Scholar

page 257 note 1 The Architecture of Theories, in The Monist, 1891.Google Scholar