Twists in the tale Histories and mysteries: philosophies of mind and the uncertain nature of reality

Abstract

Baruch Spinoza described Mind as one of the attributes of God, the only other attribute knowable to Man being ‘extension’, or things, including the material body. Most of the modern neuroscientific literature on consciousness is monist, i.e. it assumes that the mind and consciousness are, indeed can only be, products of the physical brain. John Searle, in his excellent review of the work of several of the key modern explorers of consciousness, provides a useful service in clarifying what one might call degrees of dualism. One might say that sanity represents a cluster of generally socially and culturally acceptable assumptions which is a broad path in some truly liberal cultures and decidedly narrow in autocratic, tyrannical and theocratic societies. The psychoanalysts’ position is that the feelings, attitudes, motivation, behaviour and alliances of their clientele are driven by unconscious influences of which they have little appreciation until they begin to achieve ‘insight’.