Alexander Batthyany and Avshalom Elitzur, eds.: Mind and its Place in the World: Non-Reductionist Approaches to the Ontology of Consciousness.

Alexander Batthyany and Avshalom Elitzur, eds.

Mind and its Place in the World: Non-Reductionist Approaches to the Ontology of Consciousness.

Frankfurt: Ontos Verlag 2006.

Pp. 323.

US$115.95 (cloth ISBN-13: 978-3-937202-98-3).

This is a collection of twelve essays on non-reductionist and non-physicalist approaches to the problem of consciousness. It begins with an essay by Hoyt Edge who, rather than addressing specific accounts of consciousness, takes up the 'more basic question ... (W)hy do scientists and philosophers of science so naturally think that reductionism is an appropriate methodology?' (23). Edge suggests that there is a Euro-American bias towards the 'thinkway' of reductionism, and while this bias may be advantageous in certain areas, it is inadequate in the case of consciousness. Focusing on Bernard Lonergan's interpretation of Thomas Aquinas, Donald P. Merrifield considers multi-disciplinary approaches and methodologies to consciousness, including first-person, phenomenological, and dynamical alternatives to reductive models.

Peter J. King squarely addresses the issue of ontology, and argues for a version of Cartesian dualism--'(r)eal, full-blooded, substance dualism' (61). King both considers charges that dualism is unscientific and offers what he takes to be an experimentum crusis for dualism. Russell Pannier and Thomas D. Sullivan defend a 'strong' version of property dualism. Mental properties are real and distinct from physical properties; nevertheless, we should endeavor to reunify the mental and the physical--to reconnect the 'underlying subject' (90ff) with its mental states--as Aristotle's hylomorphism couples matter and form in one substance, 'embodied form' (98). Peter B. Lloyd propounds a version of idealistic 'mental monism', and suggests that it offers a way of deflating the 'hard problem'. Indeed, if true it 'would solve the mind-body problem' (111). Unsurprisingly, however, it renders the conventional materialist world-view untenable, for 'the physical world is a fiction' (123), a 'model or construct which we ... project onto ... the phenomenal world' (128).

Fiona Steinkamp takes up the issue of the contents of consciousness, specifically the self-identification of one's own thoughts both in the context of everyday communication and telepathy. The answer to the question, 'How do I know this thought is mine' (152ff) has, it is argued, interesting implications for the relationship between the content of thought and the external world....