Abstract

Relatively recently, numerous philosophers of mind have espoused the epistemic intractability and impenetrability of both the mind-body problem and the problem of consciousness. While past and present attempts to theoretically resolve and circumvent these metaphysical questions have assumed many forms and postulated numerous conceptual paradigms (substance dualism, property dualism, eliminative materialism, functionalism, mind-body identity theory, logical behaviorism, idealism, etc.), the fundamental problem of epistemic inexplicability has not substantially dissipated since the rationalist ruminations of Descartes and Leibniz. The nascent articulation of the epistemological insolvability of the mind-body problem that has so gravely and garishly confronted contemporary theorists of mind can, in fact, be found in the philosophical work of these two notable modernist thinkers. Thus, despite the curious anthropocentric tendency towards narrativizing human history as a teleological plot towards greater progress and enlightenment, in this paper I’d like to argue, by sketching out a historiography of the mind-body problem, however loose and inchoate, that the very philosophical problems, perplexities, and conundrums we still confront when addressing the link between consciousness and the physical workings of our neurophysiology haven’t really changed nor been radically reconceptualized since the epoch of Descartes and Leibniz