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The Metaphysics of Mind
What is mind? This book addresses a timeless question in an especially lively fashion, using language accessible to the layperson, but offering a rigor that will please the specialist. Drawing on the groundbreaking work of Ludwig Wittgenstein and using a structural approach similar to that
of Gilbert Ryle's classic The Concept of Mind , Metaphysics of Mind forges the ideas of those influential thinkers with Kenny's own lifelong investigations into mind to create a classic work on philosophical psychology. Ranging from discussions of Cartesian dualism, through theories of emotion, to
profound examinations of the imagination and intellect, Metaphysics of Mind is a book for anyone who has ever tried to understand the meaning and place of human consciousness in a vast physical universe.
of Gilbert Ryle's classic The Concept of Mind , Metaphysics of Mind forges the ideas of those influential thinkers with Kenny's own lifelong investigations into mind to create a classic work on philosophical psychology. Ranging from discussions of Cartesian dualism, through theories of emotion, to
profound examinations of the imagination and intellect, Metaphysics of Mind is a book for anyone who has ever tried to understand the meaning and place of human consciousness in a vast physical universe.
- GenresPhilosophy
164 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1990
108 people want to read
About the author
Anthony Kenny
178 books114 followersSir Anthony Kenny is an English philosopher whose interests lie in the philosophy of mind, ancient and scholastic philosophy, the philosophy of Wittgenstein, and the philosophy of religion.
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May 3, 2022
Introduction:
Metaphysics is a science fundamentally concerned with being qua being — i.e., what is true of a being insofar as it is a being. We know that a red apple is red and that it is an apple. But there is more to being an apple than just having this name; we can understand that it is a fruit. Moreover, there is this property of thisness (haecceitas) in this apple that makes it this apple and not any other apple. The qualities of the apple (particularly this apple, and not just the fundamental property of apple-ness) distinguish it from other existents. In physics, for example, we distinguish between hydrogen and helium by their extrinsic properties relating to how they react to physical stimuli, but in a (physically) fundamental sense, their distinction emerges from the number of protons (and neutrons) in their nuclei, the internal constituents of such matter. It is the properties of existents, one among them (a controversial claim) is their very existence, that is the natural domain of metaphysics' main area of study: Ontology. Comes second to ontology is the study of those categories and their natures.
The Metaphysics of Mind offers an analysis of the mind itself into its constituting capacities. To define the mind as the author does, the mind would be the capacity to acquire capacities. The mind harbors a collection of capacities that act in concert to give us our daily conscious experiences. The book focuses on the main capacities of the mind, which we acquire by and through them the other (second-order) capacities. These capacities are the senses, the intellect, the will, the imagination, our volitions, and so on.
Contrary to what we usually think, the mind does not exist anywhere in the body. It is by necessity a metaphysical entity. It is metaphysical exactly like how the color green is metaphysical, or how the number ln(π) is. These mathematical objects and properties can be explained by scientific theory, but their existence in one place or on one body is not what’s metaphysically relevant about the color green, but the color in itself. We say that the color green in general exists in the world even if no physical object exemplifies this color by having the property of being green. Minds are likewise. They exist in the same sense. A brain is needed for a mind, but the brain is not the mind; the mind as we know it cannot function without a heart as well, be it natural or mechanical (or even that of a pig). The mind is diminished by a lack of a hand since a hand might receive those sensations that one of the functions of the mind processes. And so on. To quote Kenny, “To think that the mind is located in the brain is as gross an error as to think it is located in the heart or the liver.”
The book, in general, is concerned with a rigorous and to a wide sense comprehensive study of the human mind. Not psychology, but intersecting it and the cognitive sciences, in studying emotions, intelligence, sensory-data processing, awareness, and so on. So far, this book has been the best I’ve read attempting to do that. And in philosophy, in my estimation, really, there is no current master as capable of philosophy as Anthony Kenny. The book is a tour-de-force into the discipline, both of metaphysics and of the study of the mind and the functions it covers.
Chapters and Ideas:
The book contains ten chapters, each of which tackles a certain topic related to the mind. In almost every chapter, there is a myth to be dispelled, an error corrected, and an idea to be cemented in us that would help us think in the terms philosophers have invented to study the world.
The first chapter is mostly concerned with the definition of the mind, and the vast error we come to call today Cartesian Dualism, which is the doctrine that the mind is fundamentally separated from our physical body. The sixth chapter of the same book is also concerned with a similar and tangent topic, that of the self. In both cases, we commit the same error. The separation between mind and body. There are several schemes by which one can separate both, all of which ultimately lead to error, but each error may be in mutual contradiction. The first chapter talks about the separation we come to associate between our hands, say, and the ability to move our hands. Physiologists and neuroscientists can explain the neurological structure behind our ability to move our hands. They can explain what exactly happens in the body, in the brain, and in the hands. A metaphysician is not concerned with these issues, but with the capacity itself and how we process it in our theoretical frameworks. The capacity is not the action, but an action can demonstrate a capacity. I can demonstrate that I can jump by jumping at will, though that may not fully prove that I have such a capacity, but gives me a degree of confidence in its volitionality. Many proponents of Cartesian Dualism often evoke Noam Chomsky’s defense of the Cartesian thesis that we have innate species-specific abilities to acquire languages which we do not get through experience. (Chomsky defends this empirical claim by saying that children learn languages at a more rapid rate than is we would expect them to, given such a fragmentary exposition to language not all of which is absorbed.) This thesis is obfuscating several concepts. Some post-Cartesian thinkers claimed that the mind is the mental capacities. (Mathematicians often understand why this is an error. The set collecting the elements cannot be the elements themselves, even if the set contained no element but one. A set containing no element can be an element in another set, though the [no element] within it cannot be.) What the author does is merely explain how one can refine his language in discussing these issues. The sixth chapter, similarly, dispels these myths however, masked by another issue: The self. We think that we have a self other than our physical bodies. That is an error. We do not have a self in that sense. We can only have such a self by committing the dualist fallacy. In fact, this similar fallacy is often called the Homunculus Fallacy since it gives the notion that there is a little man in us who is the real us: Our physical body describes more of our appearances than something more essentially us. We are, really, what’s inside, whatever what inside us is. This conception of the self necessarily fails since if we had such a self, that self has equal in it our feet as our hands and knees, say. It is a self-image gotten by separating inward and outward concepts of who we are. We are, ultimately, a body capable of many capacities. That which we ascribe selfhood to is not anything we can pinpoint. Our body even is not ourselves not because we exclude it from the start, but since that conception assumes many things which cannot be true of our bodies. Ultimately, when we want to benefit our inner self, even if it was called our souls, what is the object to be bettered is the flesh-and-blood object we unwontedly call our bodies, and not us.
The first chapter is also a historical overview of the idea of mind, and how philosophers have studied it over the years. The second chapter is more concerned with different concepts often conflated with the mind, two of which are the brain, the soul. We tend to think that we have bodies, reminds us Kenny, rather than are bodies ourselves. The capacities of the mind are capacities which the body may exercise. The mind is distinct from the body in this sense. A key is not the key’s ability to lock the door, and so, the body is not its capacities. It is erroneous, however, to think that it is a physical entity that exists separately, and it is erroneous as well to think that it is separated from the body in the dualistic sense. The key’s ability to lock is intrinsically connected to the key. Most of the theoretical framework of the book can be found in the second and fifth chapters. The second chapter asks what the mind is, and its relation to the body. The fifth, however, is more interested in what the abilities, faculties, powers, and dispositions are, as the chapter-title aptly informs us. Much of what the fifth chapter offers is a linguistic analysis of these words and what we mean by them. Indeed, the main task of the philosophy of mind is to put to word our beliefs of the mind, and how to relate them to other beliefs concerning the mind and the world, and how scientific facts are to be incorporated into our understanding of this complex entity.
Chapters three, four, seven, eight, and nine, discuss, respectively, the will and volition, emotions and inner sentiments, our sensory organs, the sensory data they collect, and the nature of such data, imagination and the conception of unrealized or counterfactual states-of-affairs, and finally, the intellect. Each of these subjects covers a wide region of the philosophy of mind, and the author uses the theoretical framework presented to analyze them, each in term, and each to clarify and elucidate its nature. Metaphysics is a study of being qua being, and all of these have natures, exist and manifest in particular ways which must be delineated and understood for us to properly understand them in their contexts.
The last chapter, named psychology, actually focuses on the more philosophically nuanced ideas like libertarianism and determinism. In fact, this chapter not only links the two subjects (i.e., the philosophy of mind and psychology) but shows us why exactly they are fundamentally different. The philosophy of mind does not evolve into psychology when it is empirical and rigorous. It pours into psychology insight into the mind and its capacities, abilities, and the philosophical issues that require a sensitivity that philosophers and mathematicians often use in their studies.
Discussion and Conclusion:
There is hardly any page in this 160-pages volume that does not have an idea fully deserving of extensive study. This is not a textbook of the philosophy of mind, but it is written by a master of the topic who has worked and written on it for over 30 years (before writing the book, another 30 years since then). This survey of the metaphysics of the mind offers many tools we can use in understanding our emotions and their direction, and in rigorously analyzing our beliefs about ourselves. This book is an essential read to anyone who is interested in philosophy since it is not very hard in its topics, and not very hard to read, but still not a night-time read as it requires attention and concentration. I cannot objectively criticize Kenny seeing as how much I love him. I have read seven of his books so far, this being the sixth one, and I would gladly read more. Score: (9.8/10)
Metaphysics is a science fundamentally concerned with being qua being — i.e., what is true of a being insofar as it is a being. We know that a red apple is red and that it is an apple. But there is more to being an apple than just having this name; we can understand that it is a fruit. Moreover, there is this property of thisness (haecceitas) in this apple that makes it this apple and not any other apple. The qualities of the apple (particularly this apple, and not just the fundamental property of apple-ness) distinguish it from other existents. In physics, for example, we distinguish between hydrogen and helium by their extrinsic properties relating to how they react to physical stimuli, but in a (physically) fundamental sense, their distinction emerges from the number of protons (and neutrons) in their nuclei, the internal constituents of such matter. It is the properties of existents, one among them (a controversial claim) is their very existence, that is the natural domain of metaphysics' main area of study: Ontology. Comes second to ontology is the study of those categories and their natures.
The Metaphysics of Mind offers an analysis of the mind itself into its constituting capacities. To define the mind as the author does, the mind would be the capacity to acquire capacities. The mind harbors a collection of capacities that act in concert to give us our daily conscious experiences. The book focuses on the main capacities of the mind, which we acquire by and through them the other (second-order) capacities. These capacities are the senses, the intellect, the will, the imagination, our volitions, and so on.
Contrary to what we usually think, the mind does not exist anywhere in the body. It is by necessity a metaphysical entity. It is metaphysical exactly like how the color green is metaphysical, or how the number ln(π) is. These mathematical objects and properties can be explained by scientific theory, but their existence in one place or on one body is not what’s metaphysically relevant about the color green, but the color in itself. We say that the color green in general exists in the world even if no physical object exemplifies this color by having the property of being green. Minds are likewise. They exist in the same sense. A brain is needed for a mind, but the brain is not the mind; the mind as we know it cannot function without a heart as well, be it natural or mechanical (or even that of a pig). The mind is diminished by a lack of a hand since a hand might receive those sensations that one of the functions of the mind processes. And so on. To quote Kenny, “To think that the mind is located in the brain is as gross an error as to think it is located in the heart or the liver.”
The book, in general, is concerned with a rigorous and to a wide sense comprehensive study of the human mind. Not psychology, but intersecting it and the cognitive sciences, in studying emotions, intelligence, sensory-data processing, awareness, and so on. So far, this book has been the best I’ve read attempting to do that. And in philosophy, in my estimation, really, there is no current master as capable of philosophy as Anthony Kenny. The book is a tour-de-force into the discipline, both of metaphysics and of the study of the mind and the functions it covers.
Chapters and Ideas:
The book contains ten chapters, each of which tackles a certain topic related to the mind. In almost every chapter, there is a myth to be dispelled, an error corrected, and an idea to be cemented in us that would help us think in the terms philosophers have invented to study the world.
The first chapter is mostly concerned with the definition of the mind, and the vast error we come to call today Cartesian Dualism, which is the doctrine that the mind is fundamentally separated from our physical body. The sixth chapter of the same book is also concerned with a similar and tangent topic, that of the self. In both cases, we commit the same error. The separation between mind and body. There are several schemes by which one can separate both, all of which ultimately lead to error, but each error may be in mutual contradiction. The first chapter talks about the separation we come to associate between our hands, say, and the ability to move our hands. Physiologists and neuroscientists can explain the neurological structure behind our ability to move our hands. They can explain what exactly happens in the body, in the brain, and in the hands. A metaphysician is not concerned with these issues, but with the capacity itself and how we process it in our theoretical frameworks. The capacity is not the action, but an action can demonstrate a capacity. I can demonstrate that I can jump by jumping at will, though that may not fully prove that I have such a capacity, but gives me a degree of confidence in its volitionality. Many proponents of Cartesian Dualism often evoke Noam Chomsky’s defense of the Cartesian thesis that we have innate species-specific abilities to acquire languages which we do not get through experience. (Chomsky defends this empirical claim by saying that children learn languages at a more rapid rate than is we would expect them to, given such a fragmentary exposition to language not all of which is absorbed.) This thesis is obfuscating several concepts. Some post-Cartesian thinkers claimed that the mind is the mental capacities. (Mathematicians often understand why this is an error. The set collecting the elements cannot be the elements themselves, even if the set contained no element but one. A set containing no element can be an element in another set, though the [no element] within it cannot be.) What the author does is merely explain how one can refine his language in discussing these issues. The sixth chapter, similarly, dispels these myths however, masked by another issue: The self. We think that we have a self other than our physical bodies. That is an error. We do not have a self in that sense. We can only have such a self by committing the dualist fallacy. In fact, this similar fallacy is often called the Homunculus Fallacy since it gives the notion that there is a little man in us who is the real us: Our physical body describes more of our appearances than something more essentially us. We are, really, what’s inside, whatever what inside us is. This conception of the self necessarily fails since if we had such a self, that self has equal in it our feet as our hands and knees, say. It is a self-image gotten by separating inward and outward concepts of who we are. We are, ultimately, a body capable of many capacities. That which we ascribe selfhood to is not anything we can pinpoint. Our body even is not ourselves not because we exclude it from the start, but since that conception assumes many things which cannot be true of our bodies. Ultimately, when we want to benefit our inner self, even if it was called our souls, what is the object to be bettered is the flesh-and-blood object we unwontedly call our bodies, and not us.
The first chapter is also a historical overview of the idea of mind, and how philosophers have studied it over the years. The second chapter is more concerned with different concepts often conflated with the mind, two of which are the brain, the soul. We tend to think that we have bodies, reminds us Kenny, rather than are bodies ourselves. The capacities of the mind are capacities which the body may exercise. The mind is distinct from the body in this sense. A key is not the key’s ability to lock the door, and so, the body is not its capacities. It is erroneous, however, to think that it is a physical entity that exists separately, and it is erroneous as well to think that it is separated from the body in the dualistic sense. The key’s ability to lock is intrinsically connected to the key. Most of the theoretical framework of the book can be found in the second and fifth chapters. The second chapter asks what the mind is, and its relation to the body. The fifth, however, is more interested in what the abilities, faculties, powers, and dispositions are, as the chapter-title aptly informs us. Much of what the fifth chapter offers is a linguistic analysis of these words and what we mean by them. Indeed, the main task of the philosophy of mind is to put to word our beliefs of the mind, and how to relate them to other beliefs concerning the mind and the world, and how scientific facts are to be incorporated into our understanding of this complex entity.
Chapters three, four, seven, eight, and nine, discuss, respectively, the will and volition, emotions and inner sentiments, our sensory organs, the sensory data they collect, and the nature of such data, imagination and the conception of unrealized or counterfactual states-of-affairs, and finally, the intellect. Each of these subjects covers a wide region of the philosophy of mind, and the author uses the theoretical framework presented to analyze them, each in term, and each to clarify and elucidate its nature. Metaphysics is a study of being qua being, and all of these have natures, exist and manifest in particular ways which must be delineated and understood for us to properly understand them in their contexts.
The last chapter, named psychology, actually focuses on the more philosophically nuanced ideas like libertarianism and determinism. In fact, this chapter not only links the two subjects (i.e., the philosophy of mind and psychology) but shows us why exactly they are fundamentally different. The philosophy of mind does not evolve into psychology when it is empirical and rigorous. It pours into psychology insight into the mind and its capacities, abilities, and the philosophical issues that require a sensitivity that philosophers and mathematicians often use in their studies.
Discussion and Conclusion:
There is hardly any page in this 160-pages volume that does not have an idea fully deserving of extensive study. This is not a textbook of the philosophy of mind, but it is written by a master of the topic who has worked and written on it for over 30 years (before writing the book, another 30 years since then). This survey of the metaphysics of the mind offers many tools we can use in understanding our emotions and their direction, and in rigorously analyzing our beliefs about ourselves. This book is an essential read to anyone who is interested in philosophy since it is not very hard in its topics, and not very hard to read, but still not a night-time read as it requires attention and concentration. I cannot objectively criticize Kenny seeing as how much I love him. I have read seven of his books so far, this being the sixth one, and I would gladly read more. Score: (9.8/10)
March 2, 2024
Probably, one of the best philosophical book i read in a formal academic language, written by a great philosopher of our time
Definitely i will read more of Sir anthony kenny books
The book requires sharp focus and concentration, its easy to be lost through pages
Definitely i will read more of Sir anthony kenny books
The book requires sharp focus and concentration, its easy to be lost through pages
October 16, 2021
A wonderful introduction to traditional, Aristotelian epistemology and a great cure to the modern errors brought about from Descartes.
Read
August 29, 2011Pretty good read. Breaks down the components of the human mind and each of their practical uses.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews