New book!: "Mind a Brief Introduction" by John R. Searle

So I've finished "The Selfish Gene" and after reading it I have to say, it's actually a really awsome book. I recommend it to anybody interested in evolution. It ends up being very tastefully done, only a couple little pot shots here and there (at religion), but mostly he is very thorough scientific with it. Plus he's a very good writer, can put things in a way that's not only easy to understand, but kind of makes everything exciting. Despite my criticisms I may have said before, it is a truly fascinating and well written perspective.

So now we start with John R. Searle's "Mind a Brief Introduction." I got this book for a couple reasons, a. I love philosophy of the mind and kind of wanted a refresher and just a survey of what's big these days, b. I wanted to hear a new perspective, after looking at Dennet and Chalmers it seems, at least by the explanation on the back, come up with some kind of crazy third way to look at it. Figured it should be interesting. I like learning stuff.

After reading the intro and the first chapter I must admit I'm kind of disappointed. I mean it is a book for beginners on the subject, so it kind of glosses over some stuff (even though he gets almost randomly specific about other stuff). But since this book has a thesis, and that was one of the things that drew me to it, it is extremely biased.

Well, let me just get to the point that's really bugging me, no more beating around the bush, he calls Descartes contribution to philosophy of the mind a disaster. All I can say is "you can't be fucking serious right?"

Basically he says Descartes has created more questions than answers. I don't see how this takes away from the profoundness of Descartes work. If the truth has more questions than originally thought so be it. I've found that in my life the more I learn, the more I realize I don't know a lot. In fact in most situations more knowledge has led me to find that I have a lot a lot more questions. If you're looking for easy answers, don't be a philosopher. I mean what the hell is the whole point of Socrates right? Question shit! Granted there are problems with the Cartesian model beyond that of "creating more questions" but ultimately Descartes discovered the way in which we can prove the truth of consciousness.

Ok, got that off my chest. Ultimately, Searle has laid out 12 questions based on the problems he has found with Descartes' dualism: 1. Mind-Body Problem, 2. The Problem of Other Minds, 3. Skepticism about the External World, 4. The correct Analysis of Perception, 5. The Problem of Free Will, 6. The Self and Personal Identity, 7. Animals, 8. Sleep, 9. The Problem of Intentionality, 10. Mental Causation and Epiphenomenalism, 11. The Unconscious, 12. Psychological and Social explanation. These are pretty much going to be the focus of his book he explains. The main topics.

Now I do like his stress on importance of philosophy of the mind, and he does have some interesting comments on it's history and how it's picked up the slack of philosophy of language over the past couple decades. And I'm deffinitely going to give him a chance. But he's got some tell tail signs that we may have some disagreements. Especially because he seems to paint some mind ideas with really broad strokes where he ought to be more careful, at least so far it seems. I'm very interested in seeing what his solutions are for these problems though. How he can some how reconcile Dualism and Materialism without being either, and trying to remain purely scientific about it. All I can say is, I guess we'll see!