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Licensed Unlicensed Requires Authentication Published by De Gruyter January 20, 2018

On the Possibility of a Disembodied Mind

  • Lau Chong-Fuk

Abstract

Even though the Cartesian mind-body dualism has largely been dismissed in contemporary philosophy, the idea that the conscious mind can be a bodiless and non-spatial entity is still held to be possible. This paper examines a series of arguments by Jaegwon Kim, Peter Strawson, and Immanuel Kant against the possibility of a disembodied mind. It is argued that although the concept of a disembodied mind is coherent, it derives from a more fundamental concept in which the mind and the body are originally unified. The unity of mind and body, which can be called a person, is logically prior to the concept of the mind as a disembodied person, and thus the possibility of a disembodied mind turns out to depend on the existence of the physical and spatial world.

Published Online: 2018-1-20
Published in Print: 2017-12-20

© 2018 by Walter de Gruyter Berlin/Boston

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