Empirical Challenges to Conventional Mind-Brain Theory

Synopsis: Despite many significant accomplishments, mainstream scientific psychology has not provided a satisfactory theory of mind, or solved the mind-body problem, and physicalist accounts of the mind are approaching their limits without fully accounting for its properties. The computational theory of mind has collapsed, forcing physicalism to retreat into what necessarily constitutes its final frontier, the unique biology of the brain, but this biological naturalism seems destined to fare little better. Some critical properties of human mental life can already be recognized as irreconcilable in principle with physical operations of the brain, and others appear likely to prove so as well.