Rediscovery of the Soul: Contemporary World Academic Masterpieces·Philosophy Series

Author: (USA) John R. Searle
Publisher:
Publish Date: 2005-09-01
Features: The book The Rediscovery of the Mind is comprehensive in content, forceful in argument, and truly a masterpiece. — Ned Block, Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics at MIT. In this important new work, John R. Searle, with his characteristic direct style and compelling examples, delivers an irrefutable critique of the orthodox views in contemporary philosophy of mind. The book offers a thorough and detailed critique of the materialist tradition in modern philosophy of mind, while also opposing dualism. The author argues that consciousness is the primary mental phenomenon, being internal, qualitative, subjective, person-oriented ontologically, and irreducible to physical phenomena. However, just as liquidity is a feature of water, consciousness is also a feature of neurophysiological processes in the brain, and thus does not conflict with our scientific worldview. The book also analyzes concepts such as consciousness, intentionality, and background capacity, proposing new perspectives for the development of cognitive science.