While the ancients described the world as a single organism and the medieval view was theological in nature, modern thought has envisioned the world as a mechanism composed of smaller mechanisms. Raziel Abelson argues that this mechanistic explanation, when applied to human action, is dangerous because it "threatens us with a kind of spiritual annihilation...;[and] it undermines our belief in freedom of the will and with it the reality of choice, value, and moral responsibility." In Lawless (...) class='Hi'>Mind, he presents a theory about the relationship between mind and body in order to show how voluntary actions can be causally explained while still allowing for free will.Abelson attempts to reconcile the centuries-old debate between determinists and free-willers by making a distinction between two kinds of causality. "The impact of this [mechanistic] view on psychology, ethics, and politics is such as to replace moral judgment with the search for causal mechanisms. In psychology it results in reducing moral wisdom to medical therapy, in politics it reduces statesmanship to game theory and rational persuasion to behavioral modification, and in ethics it reduces moral responsibility to social conformity. If we are all programmed automata, as mechanism suggests, then the way to improve our performances is to hire a mechanic of the mind to tinker with our wiring. Is this the way to think about ourselves? I shall try to show that it is not."Abelson's novel theory of mind and psychological causality provides solutions for problems in metaphysics, ethics, psychology, and the social sciences. The issues addressed include free will and responsibility, mind-body interaction, models of psychotherapy, causal explanations in sociology, and the difference between minds and computers. Author note: Raziel Abelson is Professor of Philosophy at New York University and author of Persons: A Study of Philosophical Psychology. (shrink)

An elementary mathematical proof is offered that mental states cannot be either intensionally or extensionally identical with brain states. the proof consists in taking a subset of mental states, namely, possible thoughts of integers and showing that this set has the cardinal number aleph null; then taking the largest physically possible set of brain states k and the number of subsets of k which is 2 to the power k, and which, no matter how large, is necessarily finite. it follows (...) that these two sets cannot correspond one to one from which it then follows that they cannot have identical elements. i conclude with answers to likely objections and with a denial that my argument supports traditional dualism. (shrink)

R. Abelson argues that the identity theory is false because it is possible to have an infinite number of thoughts (e.G. Of natural numbers) while the number of possible brain states is finite. The refutation fails because it conflates the logical possibility of having infinite thoughts with the actual ability to have them. The latter depends on many contingent facts, One of which may be the number of possible brain states.

"Ethics for Modern Life," an anthology of classic and contemporary readings, offers students a well-balanced and cohesive introduction to ethics.