Mind in Objectivism A Survey of Objectivist Commentary on Philosophy of Mind

Philosophy of Mind Philosophy of mind is the branch of metaphysics that studies the basic nature and capacities of the mind. The primary issue of philosophy of mind is the “mind-body problem,” described in Anthony Flew's A Dictionary of Philosophy as the “problem of how the mind is related to the body, and of what properties, functions, and occurrences should be regarded as, respectively, mental or physical” (Flew 1984, 232). In the preface to Philosophy of Mind (an excellent and comprehensive anthology of the classics of philosophy of mind), David Chalmers lists some of the “central questions” of philosophy of mind (as conceived of within analytic philosophy) as: What is the mind? What is the relationship between mind and body? Is the mind the same thing as the brain? How can the mind affect the physical world? Could a purely physical system be conscious? Can we explain subjective experience in objective terms? Does the mind represent the world? What is the nature of belief and desire? What is the relationship between consciousness and representation? Is the mind in the head or in the environment? What can we know about other minds, in humans, animals, and machines? What is the self? (Chalmers 2002, xi) Although philosophy of mind has been a hot topic in analytic philosophy in recent decades, Objectivism currently has no well-developed account of the ontology of mind. Nevertheless, a survey of the comments on philosophy of mind by Objectivist philosophers reveals an unexpected wealth of published material, presented here by author in semi-chronological order.