When philosophers today debate the age-old problem of the relation of mind or soul to matter or body, they tend to get involved quickly in discussing not just what actually is but also what possibly may be or by contrast what necessarily must be. No thesis in this much-disputed area has been the topic of more extended discussion than that of the "supervenience", as it is called, of the mental on the physical, according to which for any difference in the mental to have been possible, some difference in the physical would have been necessary. In this book a recognized authority on modal logic, the logic of the necessary and the possible, critically examines, from a logician's distinctive point of view, the supervenience debate in philosophy of mind and philosophical psychology, and ends up questioning not so much the truth as the significance of the supervenience thesis.
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Produktdetaljer

ISBN
9781036401917
Publisert
2025-02-26
Utgiver
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Høyde
212 mm
Bredde
148 mm
Aldersnivå
P, 06
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Heftet
Antall sider
138

Forfatter

Biografisk notat

John P. Burgess received a doctorate in logic and methodology from the University of California, Berkeley, USA, in 1974, and has for almost fifty years since been on the faculty of the Philosophy Department at Princeton University, USA, serving for most of that time as Director of Undergraduate Studies. He also holds associated faculty status in mathematics and membership in the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has published nine books and more than one-hundred papers on topics in logic and related areas of philosophy (among them computability theory, set theory, non-classical logics, mathematical existence and proof, the nature of truth, and the thought of Gottlob Frege and of Saul Kripke). In his latest work he turns his logician's eye towards debates on the mind-body problem, bringing an outsider's perspective to some much-debated issues, and aspiring to provide an irritant to stimulate re-examination of some points which have been taken for granted for too long.