Problems of Mind and Matter

Professor Wisdom gives an elementary introduction to the applications in philosophy of the analytical method.

John Wisdom (Author)

9780521091978, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 1 January 1934

232 pages
20.3 x 12.7 x 1.3 cm, 0.26 kg

'It is written with admirable clarity. It contains a number of novel and interesting doctrines, and indeed has something new to say on each of the main topics that it touches … an excellent introduction to philosophical analysis as practised at Cambridge.' Mind

Professor Wisdom gives an elementary introduction to the applications in philosophy of the analytical method. He believes that the aim of analysis is clarity, whereas the aim of speculative philosophy is truth. After a brief introduction on what analysis is, he discusses the relation of body and mind and seeks for causal relations between mental and material events. He concludes this section with a chapter on Free will, before turning to perception and the external world.

Prefaces
Part I. Introduction: 1. Analysis and speculative philosophy
2. First examples of analysis
3. Analytic vocabulary
Part I. Body and Mind: 1. The analytic problem about ownership
2. Distinction between mental and nervous events
3. Denial of mental events - materialism
4. Correlations between bodily and mental events
5. Do bodily events occasion mental events and vice versa?
6. Do bodily events produce mental events
7. Ownership
8. Freewill
Part II. Cognition: 9. perception
10. Knowledge of material things
11. Judgment and truth
Appendix
Index.

Subject Areas: Philosophy [HP]