Mind and brain
the embodied person
pp. 113-129
in: Stuart Spicker, Tristram Engelhardt (eds), Philosophical dimensions of the neuro-medical sciences, Berlin, Springer, 1976Abstract
Since, unfortunately, I am not a neurophysiologist, but only a philosopher, I cannot cope with Dr. Pribram's philosophical terminology. I have a hunch that the positions we take on the mind-body problem are convergent, but except for his piquant suggestion at the close (for which I myself have argued elsewhere) that mind is extrinsic and body intrinsic, I do not understand very much of his argument. "Critical realism" was always over my head, so I have no idea what it is to refute it; and "isms' in general are something I try, if I can, to avoid. So let me start, not so much from Pribram's general thesis as from the passage by Karl Lashley that he has quoted, and then try to see in relation to some specific examples what the mind-body or mind-brain problem might be said to amount to and what direction we might take — or have taken — if not to resolve it, at least (as Lashley himself in his 1958 paper was professedly attempting) to lessen its tension.