The Enigma of the Mind
The Mind-Body Problem in Contemporary Thought

This book deals with one of the most fascinating problems of Western culture: the mind/body relationship.

Sergio Moravia (Author), Scott Staton (Translated by)

9780521405577, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 27 January 1995

336 pages
22.9 x 15.3 x 1.9 cm, 0.47 kg

"...his book should be of interest to scholars of Vico and to all partisans of humanistic thinking....provides a thorough critical and historical assessment of the mind-body problem....I like what I read in Moravia'a critical assessment of the current approaches to the mind-body problem." Marcel Danesi, New Vico Studies 14

Sergio Moravia's The Enigma of the Mind (originally published in Italian as L'enigma della mente) offers a broad and lucid critical and historical survey of one of the fundamental debates in the philosophy of mind - the relationship of mind and body. This problem continues to raise deep questions concerning the nature of man. The book has two central aims. First, Professor Moravia sketches the major recent contributions to the mind/body problem from philosophers of mind. Having established this framework Professor Moravia pursues his second aim - the articulation of a particular interpretation of the mental and the mind-body problem. The book's detailed and systematic treatment of this fundamental philosophical issue make it ideal for upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. It should also prove provocative reading for psychologists and cognitive scientists.

The enigma of the mind: introduction to a metaphor
1. Toward a physical science of the mental
2. The apogee of physicalism
3. The obscure relationship
4. Psychology as alchemy
5. The mind as function
6. The mind as property and as event
7. The mind as language
8. Speaking in many different ways
9. The mind as mode of subjective experience
10. The mind as 'subject' and as 'being-in-the-world'
Appendix: The mental as intentional/'personal' emergence.

Subject Areas: Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Philosophy of mind [HPM], Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK]