Abstract

David Rosenthal’s anthology is a valuable collection of readings. There is no dross in this book: each article is both an excellent philosophical composition in its own right and a marked stage in the development of the relatively young discipline, the philosophy of mind. Of the five sections of the book the first two are introductory; one historical the other problematic. The first section contains statements on classical materialism by Descartes, Spinoza, and Hobbes. The Descartes selections include passages from his correspondence with Newcastle and Henry Moore. These clarify his veiled attack on Montaigne’s attempt to mitigate the differences between man and beast in Part V of the Discourse. Along with excerpts from Part V and Meditation VI the letters leave a coherent impression of the way Descartes handles "materialism." In the second part we are given the familiar statement of the identity thesis by Smart along with two early articles by Shaffer and Cornman, which, at the time overlooked, are significant forecasts of problems that most identity theorists are only today recognizing as problems. For instance, Cornman’s suggestion that the first project for the identity theorist is to "develop further the concept of a category" has attracted close attention only in the last few years.