A History of the Mind by Humphrey Nicholas

Author:Humphrey, Nicholas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2012-08-25T00:00:00+00:00

17

FIVE CHARACTERISTICS IN SEARCH OF A THEORY

The truth or otherwise of the M. assertions about consciousness made in Chapter 15 was bound to depend heavily on definition. I would like to think that, in responding to the challenge to bring the word into the open, I have in fact (and hardly by coincidence) provided some justification for most of those assertions—and slipped my hands around the body of consciousness itself. But, with the “real problem” now exposed and delineated, the real work of this book still lies ahead. Indeed everything up to this point might be considered an extended preface to this one question: if to be conscious is essentially to have sensations, then what is it to have sensations?

When for example “I have a pain,” who or what is the “I” here; in what way does the having of sensations become a property of such an “I”; and how can this “I” with its sensations be set in a material brain? If we can provide answers to these questions, I dare say we shall have consciousness and the mind-body problem licked.

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