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Mind & Morals

Consciousness Resurrected

Güven Güzeldere asks where we are now with the mind-body problem.

While the mind-body problem has been around for a long time, it is no less compelling for philosophers today. This is not to say that we are in the same place with regard to understanding it as the philosophers of bygone ages. On the contrary, there has been impressive progress. This progress has been due to great advances in the scientific understanding of the workings of the brain, and to the continual refinement of our philosophical concepts and of the questions we ask about the mind. For these reasons, can we now say that the mind-body problem is nearing a (re)solution, and probably won’t be among the open-ended puzzles of 21st century philosophy?

Judging from the remarkably hot and rather unexpected wave of controversy concerning consciousness in the last decade of the 20th century, the mind-body problem seems to be very much alive and kicking.

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