Bodies, minds and materialism

• Main Author: Beggs, Noah Stewart
• Format: Others
• Published: 1998
• Online Access: http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/615/1/MQ39433.pdf; Beggs, Noah Stewart <http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/view/creators/Beggs=3ANoah_Stewart=3A=3A.html> (1998) Bodies, minds and materialism. Masters thesis, Concordia University.

It is common to describe subjective experience as a mental, and thus metaphysical, phenomenon. This core assumption is a central tenet of our intellectual history. How this bears on our ability to take seriously new theories of mind in light of progressive discovery is what is at issue in this paper. Herein, it is argued that because the idiom we use to speak about the mind is predisposed to countenance ontological dualism, it begs the question against alternative conceptions of mind. I will thus argue that subjectivity need not entail non-physical phenomena, pace the assumptions of the traditional dualist idiom.