The Will: Volume 1, Dual Aspect Theory

O'Shaughnessy investigates bodily action in a new edition of this classic work of analytical philosophy.

Brian O'Shaughnessy (Author)

9780521619523, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 17 July 2008

322 pages
22.7 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm, 0.53 kg

'Brian O'Shaughnessy is one of the best philosophers in England .…He has worked by himself largely outside of contemporary philosophical society, and these wild and wonderful volumes reveal with what intensity and on what a scale he has worked … A good philosopher must find his obsession, and it will drive him for the rest of his life .… O'Shaughnessy's obsession has been with the most intimate of those relations in which the self stands to the physical or 'external' world; its relation to that part of the physical world which it can move directly and of which it has immediate awareness - the body … The result is a theory of mind and body much richer than anything Wittgenstein would have allowed himself. With its strong personality and wonderful flights of language ... the book is accessible to anyone with a taste for sustained philosophical argument and plenty of time.' Thomas Nagel, The Times Literary Supplement

The phenomenon of action in which the mind moves the body has puzzled philosophers over the centuries. In this new edition of a classic work of analytical philosophy, Brian O'Shaughnessy investigates bodily action and attempts to resolve some of the main problems. His expanded and updated discussion examines the scope of the will and the conditions in which it makes contact with the body, and investigates the epistemology of the body. He sheds light upon the strangely intimate relation of awareness in which we stand to our own bodies, doing so partly through appeal to the concept of the body-image. The result is a new and strengthened emphasis on the vitally important function of the bodily will as a transparently intelligible bridge between mind and body, and the proposal of a dual aspect theory of the will.

Introduction
Part I. The Limits of the Will: 1. The logical limits of the will
2. Is the body the final boundary of the will?
3. Extending the will beyond the body
4. Magic versus mechanism in action
Part II. The Immediate Object of the Will: Introduction
5. The given
6. The location of sensations
7. The body image (1): myth and reality
8. The body image (2): the long-term body-image.

Subject Areas: Philosophy of mind [HPM], Analytical philosophy & Logical Positivism [HPCF5], Western philosophy: Ancient, to c 500 [HPCA], Philosophy [HP]