Abstract
Bunge’s writings on the mind–body problem provide a rigorous, analytical antidote to the persistent anti-materialist tendency that has characterized the history of philosophy and science. Bunge gives special attention to dualism and its shortcomings, and this attention is welcome in view of the resurgence of the doctrine today. However, I focus my comments selectively on Bunge’s more controversial, provocative claims, not to dismiss them, but to engage with them seriously. For example, a difficulty arising from Bunge’s rhetorical style and its undoubted virtues is that not all the targets of his selfconfessed “bashings” (2010, xi) are equally deserving. For example, Bunge suggests “most contemporary philosophers of mind are indifferent to psychology, or are remarkably uninformed about it”. This charge cannot be sustained today in light of the work of foremost philosophers today.
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Notes
In fairness to Descartes, it is worth noting that he had good, essentially scientific reasons for his dualism and even his cogito meditations have an important logical structure that has not been properly recognized (See Slezak 1988, 2010). The criticism of Cottingham and Loar applies more to modern dualists than to Descartes himself.
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Slezak, P. Mario Bunge’s Materialist Theory of Mind and Contemporary Cognitive Science. Sci & Educ 21, 1475–1484 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-012-9463-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-012-9463-7