The Mind/Body Problem

The Question

What is the relation between mind and body, or mind and brain?
What is the relation between the mental and the physical?

As I described in class, we think we have a pretty good understanding of the physical, but we're not as clear about the mental?
So, the first step in addressing the mind/body problem is to answer the question: what is the mind?
(Only after we come up with a metaphysical account of the mental can we address the relation between the mental and the physical.)

Methodology

We're going to be looking at a number of different rival accounts of the mental. Ultimately, we want to decide between these rival accounts. We'd like to weigh the pro's and con's of each. Let me say a brief word about how I'll be doing this in class.

With each account we look at, we will question/examine what sense it makes of:

(a) The epistemology. Does the account make sense of the epistemology of the mental? Does it account for how/what we can know about minds? (The main epistemological question we'll look at is the "Problem of Other Minds".)
(b) The metaphysics. Does the account make metaphysical sense?

(Note: If this is confusing, don't worry. It should make more sense as we start discussing the different views about the mind. I only point it out now to make clear our "game plan" for examining these issues.)