The Mind's Place: A Narrative Review of the Philosophy of Mind, from Descartes's Dualism to the Panpsychist Revival

Abstract

The mind--body problem asks where the mental belongs in a physical world, and philosophy of mind is the literature of every answer yet proposed. This article presents a narrative review of that literature's primary line. The synthesis is organized around three themes: the dualist settlement and its mid-century collapse, in which Descartes's thinking substance, Ryle's category mistake, and the identity theory of Smart and Place traded a second world for a neurophysiological identity; the functionalist ascendancy and its discontents, in which Putnam's and Lewis's role theories made mind software-like and multiply realizable, and Nagel's bat, Jackson's black-and-white scientist, and Kim's causal exclusion re-opened what functionalism had closed; and the consciousness revival, in which Chalmers's hard problem, Russell's intrinsic nature, and Strawson's realistic monism lifted panpsychism from dismissal to serious metaphysics. It is concluded that the literature has not solved its problem but has disciplined it: every surviving position is now defined by which of the data---intentionality, phenomenality, causal closure---it is prepared to pay for.