The Will: Volume 2, A Dual Aspect Theory

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

Brian O'Shaughnessy (Author)

9780521853675, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 17 July 2008

328 pages
23.5 x 15.5 x 2.2 cm, 0.63 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.

Part III. Dual Aspect Theory: Introduction
9. Observation and the will
10. The scope to the intention
11. Voluntariness and volition
12. The proof of a duel aspect theory of physical action
13. The definition of action
14. Defining the psychological and the mental
15. The ontological status of physical action
16. Dual aspect theory and the epistemology of physical action
Part IV. From Mind to Body: Introduction
17. The antecedents of action (1): from desires to intention
18. The antecedents of action (2): from intending to trying
19. The antecedents of action (3): from will to action
20. The 'mental pineal gland'.

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