Re-thinking Mind and Body: cross cultural and historical perspectives on mind-body problems
Monima Chadha, Dirk Baltzly, John Bigelow, Jay Garfield (Smith College), John Heil (Davidson College). Monash Research Fund, 2003.
The mind-body problem as moderns conceive it is not an issue whose parameters are simply given in one's experience of having a mind. Rather, the shape the mind-body problem takes depends on a) specific ways of sorting the minded from the non-minded things and b) ways of conceiving of the relations between their capacities, e.g. cognition and sense perception. This project brings our current presuppositions into relief by contrasting them with ancient Greek and Indian views. We question the degree to which the idea of a mind is culturally constructed. This has implications for how we conceive the goal of artificial intelligence.