Description
Book SynopsisThe Escape of the Mind is part of a current movement in psychology and philosophy of mind that calls into question what is perhaps our most basic, most cherished, and universally accepted belief--that our minds are inside of our bodies. Howard Rachlin adopts the counterintuitive position that our minds, conscious and unconscious, lie not where our firmest (yet unsupported) introspections tell us they are, but in how we actually behave over the long run. Perhaps paradoxically, the book argues that our introspections, no matter how positive we are about them, tell us absolutely nothing about our minds. The name of the present version of this approach to the mind is teleological behaviorism.The approaches of teleological behaviorism will be useful in the science of individual behavior for developing methods of self-control and in the science of social behavior for developing social cooperation. Without in any way denigrating the many contributions of neuroscience to human welfare, The Esc
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements ; Preface ; 1. The Invention of the Mind (Plato) ; 2. Mind and Body (Aristotle) ; 3. The Separation of Mind And Body (Saint Augustine) ; 4. The Imprisonment of the Mind (Descartes) ; 5. The Law of Specific Nerve Energies (Muller) ; 6. The Re-Emergence of the Mind: Extended cognition ; 7. The Evolution of Altruism And Self-Control ; 8. Teleological Analysis of Altruism And Self-Control ; 9. Consciousness and Behavior ; 10. How To Make IBM's Computer Watson Human ; Two commentaries: ; From contemporary philosophy of mind (McDowell) ; From radical behaviorism (Schlinger) ; Author's reply ; 11. Shaping the Coherent Self: A Moral Achievement
