Abstract

The subtitle of this essay can be misleading; the author devotes only one preliminary chapter and a brief part of another chapter to discussing issues of scientific language and method. The book is primarily an essay in the philosophy of mind. Rosenblueth is a well-known neurophysiologist who has considerable background in the philosophy of science. His purpose is to articulate a general philosophical position that is consistent with the results of science as well as with the attitudes and activities of experimental scientists; and to develop from this basis an answer to the question of how mind and brain are related. He spends four chapters summarizing the biological and neurophysiological research that shows the nature of the correlation between mental and neurophysiological events. He concludes from this that our knowledge of the material world is limited to those structures that can be coded by the afferent fibers. He then articulates four unprovable "postulates" which scientists must assume. One of these is a probabilistic statement of causal determinism. This postulate is the basis for his rejecting the idea that the mind can causally influence the brain through volitions. Moreover, he argues for the converse statement as well; the brain cannot cause conscious events since the latter are mental and not material. But this denial of causal interaction does not lead Rosenblueth to conclude that mind/body dualism must be rejected. He considers and rejects the monist views of Feigl, Russell and Eddington, and thus comes up with a dualist view that denies causal interaction. Although the scientific material cited by Rosenblueth is up to date, he does not consider the current philosophical discussions on the mind/body problem.--J. M. B.