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The Philosophy of Mind
Paperback. Wrappers are edge worn and scuffed. Some curling at corners. Good otherwise. 170 pages.
- GenresPhilosophy
Paperback
First published January 13, 1977
3 people are currently reading
41 people want to read
About the author
Jonathan Glover
27 books55 followersJonathan Glover (born 1941) is a British philosopher known for his studies on bioethics. He was educated in Tonbridge School, later going on to Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He was a fellow and tutor in philosophy at New College, Oxford. He currently teaches ethics at King's College London. Glover is a fellow of the Hastings Center, an independent bioethics research institution in the United States.
In Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, published in 1999, Glover makes the case for Applied Ethics. He examines the various types of atrocity that were perpetrated in the 20th century and considers what sort of bulwarks there could be against them. He allows that religion has provided bulwarks, which are getting eroded. He identifies three types of bulwark. The two more dependable are sympathy and respect for human dignity. The less dependable third is Moral Identity: "I belong to a kind of person who would not do that sort of thing". This third is less dependable because notions of moral identity can themselves be warped, as was done by the Nazis.
In 1977 he argued that to call a fetus a human person was to stretch the term beyond its natural boundaries.
In The End of Faith, Sam Harris quotes Glover as saying: "Our entanglements with people close to us erode simple self-interest. Husbands, wives, lovers, parents, children and friends all blur the boundaries of selfish concern. Francis Bacon rightly said that people with children have given hostages to fortune. Inescapably, other forms of friendship and love hold us hostage too...Narrow self-interest is destabilized."
In 1989 the European Commission hired Glover to head a panel on embryo research in Europe.
He is married to Vivette Glover a prominent neuroscientist.
In Humanity: A Moral History of the Twentieth Century, published in 1999, Glover makes the case for Applied Ethics. He examines the various types of atrocity that were perpetrated in the 20th century and considers what sort of bulwarks there could be against them. He allows that religion has provided bulwarks, which are getting eroded. He identifies three types of bulwark. The two more dependable are sympathy and respect for human dignity. The less dependable third is Moral Identity: "I belong to a kind of person who would not do that sort of thing". This third is less dependable because notions of moral identity can themselves be warped, as was done by the Nazis.
In 1977 he argued that to call a fetus a human person was to stretch the term beyond its natural boundaries.
In The End of Faith, Sam Harris quotes Glover as saying: "Our entanglements with people close to us erode simple self-interest. Husbands, wives, lovers, parents, children and friends all blur the boundaries of selfish concern. Francis Bacon rightly said that people with children have given hostages to fortune. Inescapably, other forms of friendship and love hold us hostage too...Narrow self-interest is destabilized."
In 1989 the European Commission hired Glover to head a panel on embryo research in Europe.
He is married to Vivette Glover a prominent neuroscientist.
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May 14, 2023
Reviewing this one in a manner different from my other reviews because
1) This is a scholarly book that I had no business reading and now I am going to review it.
2) I checked out two books from the Sahitya Akademi Library two months ago for a bit of light reading and I am here to torture you with my half-baked views on these books.
Lately, the workings of the human mind have me in its grip and while surfing the psychology section in the library, I picked this on a whim. Yes, the psychology section; DK’s The Psychology Book starts with ‘Philosophical Roots: Psychology in the Making’, so there’s that.
Edited by Jonathan Glover, The Philosophy of Mind contains ten papers (apart from the elaborate introduction) by B.A. Farrell, Patrick Gardiner, G.A. Cohen, J.A. Deutsch, Stuart Hampshire, Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson, Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, and Derek Parfit, all experts in their respective fields.
The first line was what hooked me; being an overthinker, I was instantly under its spell.
This compilation covers a range of topics from the interpretation of thoughts, problems of description and classification, various models of the mind, the mind–body problem to problems of personal identity. At the outset, the aspect of role-playing is something that intrigued me. As described in the ‘models of the mind’ section under Introduction:
One of the most powerful models in current sociology and social psychology is that of role-playing.
Through examples, the author(s) have later illustrated the ways we often behave differently in different situations or in the presence of different people, each of us conforming to a ‘role’ that is, in that scenario, expected of us.
The first paper explores the criteria for a psychoanalytic interpretation, what to accept or not during a conversation between a psychologist and their patient, about deriving which information is significant and can be used in treatment. It delves into the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and clinical data.
The second paper is on error, faith, and self-deception, where the author attempts to deconstruct some previous scholars’ works on the same.
The third paper discusses beliefs and roles and questions the nature of beliefs in conjunction with the roles one plays in society. It referenced a play that I now look forward to reading: The Mikado by W.S. Gilbert.
The above lines in this paper have my heart, something that I personally believe in. I have come across many people in life who are unwilling to share what they know, believing the person who seeks knowledge to be a thief. I am an epistemophile (lover/seeker of knowledge) who always tries to share what I know because, at the end of the day, it is up to the person receiving the knowledge (and that applies to me too) to do what they want to with it.
The fourth (shortest) paper is on the structural basis of behaviour, and the explanation regarding behaviour that it tries to justify is that studying an animal’s physiology and anatomy in great detail and the environment they acted in can provide us with an explanation as to why the animal behaved in the way it did, given certain conditions.
The fifth paper discusses feeling and expression. And this is of course my favourite, as the author bases the behaviour of an individual on their feelings and expressions. The mimic/imitation aspect as well as the relation of the inner life of feeling to perceptible behaviour is also discussed.
The sixth paper is titled the mental life of some machines where its author looks at the mind–body problem by focusing on preferring, believing, and feeling using a notion of a ‘Turing machine’ (hence the title).
The seventh paper—psychology as philosophy—felt like I finally reached the reason why I picked up this book. This paper debates behaviour as consisting of things we do, whether intentionally or not.
The eighth paper is quite complex as it discusses brain bisection and the unity of consciousness. From what I understood, the author is a bit pessimistic about the major discoveries concerning the neurophysiological basis of the mind, something to do with the interaction of the two halves of the cerebral cortex and what happens when they are disconnected.
The ninth paper is on the self and the future and in layman’s terms focuses on the Freaky Friday scenario. This was a rather weird paper that stressed on utterances and thoughts of one person affecting the other after their bodies (or minds, however you look at it) have been exchanged.
The tenth and final paper is on personal identity, its nature and its importance. To some extent, from what I understood, it discusses split personality disorder.
For more information on the book, you will have to either read it or first read about psychology, then philosophy, and then read the book.
Originally posted on:
Shaina's Musings
1) This is a scholarly book that I had no business reading and now I am going to review it.
2) I checked out two books from the Sahitya Akademi Library two months ago for a bit of light reading and I am here to torture you with my half-baked views on these books.
Lately, the workings of the human mind have me in its grip and while surfing the psychology section in the library, I picked this on a whim. Yes, the psychology section; DK’s The Psychology Book starts with ‘Philosophical Roots: Psychology in the Making’, so there’s that.
Some of the readings chosen here are more closely related to psychology than is usual in the philosophy of mind.
Edited by Jonathan Glover, The Philosophy of Mind contains ten papers (apart from the elaborate introduction) by B.A. Farrell, Patrick Gardiner, G.A. Cohen, J.A. Deutsch, Stuart Hampshire, Hilary Putnam, Donald Davidson, Thomas Nagel, Bernard Williams, and Derek Parfit, all experts in their respective fields.
The first line was what hooked me; being an overthinker, I was instantly under its spell.
The problems about the mind that are called philosophical concern the general framework of our thinking about particular mental phenomena.
This compilation covers a range of topics from the interpretation of thoughts, problems of description and classification, various models of the mind, the mind–body problem to problems of personal identity. At the outset, the aspect of role-playing is something that intrigued me. As described in the ‘models of the mind’ section under Introduction:
One of the most powerful models in current sociology and social psychology is that of role-playing.
It is obvious that, in many social situations, people’s conduct is greatly influenced by the conventional expectations of others.
Through examples, the author(s) have later illustrated the ways we often behave differently in different situations or in the presence of different people, each of us conforming to a ‘role’ that is, in that scenario, expected of us.
The first paper explores the criteria for a psychoanalytic interpretation, what to accept or not during a conversation between a psychologist and their patient, about deriving which information is significant and can be used in treatment. It delves into the relationship between psychoanalytic theory and clinical data.
The second paper is on error, faith, and self-deception, where the author attempts to deconstruct some previous scholars’ works on the same.
The third paper discusses beliefs and roles and questions the nature of beliefs in conjunction with the roles one plays in society. It referenced a play that I now look forward to reading: The Mikado by W.S. Gilbert.
A person cannot know something which he (logically) cannot transmit to another. In this sense, knowledge can never be anyone’s special property: to give it to another is never to alienate it.
The above lines in this paper have my heart, something that I personally believe in. I have come across many people in life who are unwilling to share what they know, believing the person who seeks knowledge to be a thief. I am an epistemophile (lover/seeker of knowledge) who always tries to share what I know because, at the end of the day, it is up to the person receiving the knowledge (and that applies to me too) to do what they want to with it.
The fourth (shortest) paper is on the structural basis of behaviour, and the explanation regarding behaviour that it tries to justify is that studying an animal’s physiology and anatomy in great detail and the environment they acted in can provide us with an explanation as to why the animal behaved in the way it did, given certain conditions.
The fifth paper discusses feeling and expression. And this is of course my favourite, as the author bases the behaviour of an individual on their feelings and expressions. The mimic/imitation aspect as well as the relation of the inner life of feeling to perceptible behaviour is also discussed.
The sixth paper is titled the mental life of some machines where its author looks at the mind–body problem by focusing on preferring, believing, and feeling using a notion of a ‘Turing machine’ (hence the title).
The seventh paper—psychology as philosophy—felt like I finally reached the reason why I picked up this book. This paper debates behaviour as consisting of things we do, whether intentionally or not.
The eighth paper is quite complex as it discusses brain bisection and the unity of consciousness. From what I understood, the author is a bit pessimistic about the major discoveries concerning the neurophysiological basis of the mind, something to do with the interaction of the two halves of the cerebral cortex and what happens when they are disconnected.
The ninth paper is on the self and the future and in layman’s terms focuses on the Freaky Friday scenario. This was a rather weird paper that stressed on utterances and thoughts of one person affecting the other after their bodies (or minds, however you look at it) have been exchanged.
The tenth and final paper is on personal identity, its nature and its importance. To some extent, from what I understood, it discusses split personality disorder.
For more information on the book, you will have to either read it or first read about psychology, then philosophy, and then read the book.
Originally posted on:
Shaina's Musings
Displaying 1 of 1 review