Articles liés à Persons and Minds: The Prospects of Nonreductive Materialism

Persons and Minds: The Prospects of Nonreductive Materialism - Couverture souple

Livre 119 sur 214: Boston Studies in the Philosophy and History of Science

Margolis, Joseph

 
9789027708632: Persons and Minds: The Prospects of Nonreductive Materialism
Couverture souple
ISBN 10 : 9027708630 ISBN 13 : 9789027708632
Editeur : Springer, 2013

Synopsis

Persons and Minds is an inquiry into the possibilities of materialism. Professor Margolis starts his investigation, however, with a critique of the range of contemporary materialist theories, and does not find them viable. None of them, he argues, "can accommodate in a convincing way the most distinctive features of the mental life of men and oflower creatures and the imaginative possibilities of discovery and technology" (p. 8). In an extraordinarily rich analysis, Margolis carefully considers and criticizes mind-body identity theories, physicalism, eliminative materialism, behaviorism, as inadequate precisely in that they are reductive. He argues, then, for ramified concepts of emergence, and embodiment which will sustain a philosophically coherent account both of the distinctive non-natural character of persons and of their being naturally embodied. But Margolis provokes us to ask, what is an em­ bodied mind? The crucial context for him is not the plain physical body as such, but culture. "Persons", he writes, "are in a sense not natural entities: they exist only in cultural contexts and are identifiable as such only by refer­ ence to their mastery of language and of whatever further abilities presuppose such mastery" (p. 245). The hallmark of persons, in Margolis's account, is their capacity for freedom, as well as their physical endowment. Thus he writes, " . . . their characteristic powers - in effect, their freedom - must inform the order of purely physical causes in a distinctive way" (p. 246).

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l'auteur

The author is currently Laura H. Carnell Professor of Philosophy at Temple University (Philadelphia, USA). He's taught and lectured widely in the United States and worldwide and has published close to forty books. He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Helsinki and has been awarded a fulbright fellowship to Sweden. He's written widely in most of the principal areas of philosophical research and is particularly known for his attempt to integrate the whole of philosophy in terms of a close analysis of the cultural world: with special attention to the analysis of the self; history and historicity; language, art and technology; the physical and human sciences; action and meaning; mind and knowledge, theory and practice. He's particularly known for his heterodox defense of the flux (against invariance); the artifactual nature of the human self (against a biologized human nature); the subsumption of the physical sciences under the more general concerns of the human sciences; problems of intentionality (penetrated in culturaly significant ways); the defense of relativism, emergentism, historicism, and non-reductive materialism. He is also known for his sustained analysis of American philosophy during its most important and influential period and his reinterpretation of the prospects of a redirected pragmatism within the whole of Eurocentric philosophy.

À propos de la quatrième de couverture

Persons and Minds is an inquiry into the possibilities of materialism. Professor Margolis starts his investigation, however, with a critique of the range of contemporary materialist theories, and does not find them viable. None of them, he argues, "can accommodate in a convincing way the most distinctive features of the mental life of men and oflower creatures and the imaginative possibilities of discovery and technology" (p. 8). In an extraordinarily rich analysis, Margolis carefully considers and criticizes mind-body identity theories, physicalism, eliminative materialism, behaviorism, as inadequate precisely in that they are reductive. He argues, then, for ramified concepts of emergence, and embodiment which will sustain a philosophically coherent account both of the distinctive non-natural character of persons and of their being naturally embodied. But Margolis provokes us to ask, what is an em­ bodied mind? The crucial context for him is not the plain physical body as such, but culture. "Persons", he writes, "are in a sense not natural entities: they exist only in cultural contexts and are identifiable as such only by refer­ ence to their mastery of language and of whatever further abilities presuppose such mastery" (p. 245). The hallmark of persons, in Margolis's account, is their capacity for freedom, as well as their physical endowment. Thus he writes, " . . . their characteristic powers - in effect, their freedom - must inform the order of purely physical causes in a distinctive way" (p. 246).

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
Springer
Date d'édition
2013
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
9027708630
ISBN 13 
9789027708632
Reliure
Broché
Nombre de pages
310
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