The mind-body problem has been one of the most intensely debated problems in philosophy during the last century. Yet the historical context from which this problem has developed has largely been ignored. History of the Mind-Body Problem is a collection of new essays on the various concerns that have given rise to and informed the mind-body problem in philosophy. Contemporary debates over the mind-body problem contain a number of different views on how the problem should be approached, what its sources are, and what its present condition and importance is. History of the Mind-Body Problem puts theses views in a much needed historical context and asks anew what the at history can tell us about the relation of mind to body. The essays in this stellar collection range from Aristotle, Aquinas and Descartes to the origins of the qualia. Rae Langton, M.W.F. Stone, Sarah Patterson, Susan James, John Cottingham, Neil Manson, Tim Crane, M.G.F. Martin

Table of Contents

1. Introduction, Tim Crane and Sarah Patterson 2. The Musical, the Magical and the Mathematical Soul, Rae Langton 3. The Soul's Relation to the Body: Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant and the Parisian debate on Monopsychism, M.W.F.Stone 4. How Cartesian was Descartes?, Sarah Patterson 5. The Emergence of the Cartesian Mind, Susan James 6. Intentionality or Phenomenology? Descartes on the Objects of Thought, John Cottingham 7. 'A tumbling-ground for whimsies'? The History and Contemporary role of the Conscious/Unconscious Contrast, Neil Manson 8. The Origins of Qualia, Tim Crane 9. Beyond Dispute: Sense-Datea, Intentionality and the Mind-Body Problem, M.G.F.Martin.

Author Biography

Tim Crane teaches Philosophy at University College London, UK. Sarah Patterson teaches Philosophy at Birkbeck College, London, UK.