IN DISCUSSIONS OF the mind–body problem, there are two separate issues on which attention is commonly focused: ‘How is it that a material object (a brain) can actually evoke consciousness?’; and, conversely; ‘How is it that a consciousness, by the action of its will, can actually influence the (apparently physically determined) motion of material objects?’ These are the passive and active aspects of the mind–body problem. It appears that we have, in ‘mind’ (or, rather, in ‘consciousness’), a non-material ‘thing’ that is, on the one hand, evoked by the material world and, on the other, can
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