O'Shaughnessy on Mind and Body

Abstract

It is not so long ago that those who, in the philosophy of mind, defended an ultimate ontological distinction between mental realities and bodily ones, or dualism as the term is normally used in this context, were straightway thought to be very naive and immature, altogether unmindful of considerable advances in recent philosophy which no one would be likely to reverse. Only very recently a young philosopher, reflecting what many have come to take for granted, opened his paper for the Aristotelian Society by disclaiming all association with Cartesian dualism -'only a crank would wish to revive that' ;2 it is a brush with which no self-respecting philosopher of today, familiar with the 'dark warnings from Wittgensteinians', would wish to be tarred. There have in fact however been many modifications of the outright rejections of dualism, especially in the form of a severely reductionist behaviourism, and concessions of considerable importance to the insights we owe to Descartes and those who preceded him. Professor Richard Swinburne has done much in this vein, insisting upon the ultimacy of personal identity as we directly apprehend it. Professor Roderick Chisholm has done much in the same way in his own work, and so have Sir John Eccles and Sir Karl Popper. I had occasion to refer recently to the insistence by Mr John Foster of Oxford that 'The subject of consciousness is, as Descartes conceived him, a simple mental continuant, a pure ego, not requiring a body for his existence, but possessing that body with which his mind thus causally combines'. 'The person himself is essentially mental and only contingently corporeal. '3 The ghost which it was thought had been finally laid to rest walks again. Even so, the concessions, substantial as they are, have also a lingering doubt about them. We must not go too far back to Descartes, the concessions need qualifications, and these may also be substantial; we have to walk warily if we go along again with the outmoded dualism. It may seem right in so many