This volume brings together a collection of essays that explore in a new way how unacknowledged moral concerns are integral to debates in the philosophy of mind.The radical suggestion of the book is that we can make sense of the internal dynamics and cultural significance of these debates only when we understand the moral forces that shape them. Drawing inspiration from a variety of traditions including Wittgenstein, Lacan, phenomenology and analytic philosophy, the authors address a wide range of topics including (...) the mind/body-problem, the problem of other minds, subjectivity and objectivity, the debates on mindreading, naturalism, reductive physicalism, representationalism and the ‘E-turn’; Dennett’s heterophenomenology, McDowell’s neo-Kantianism, Wittgenstein’s ‘private language’ considerations and his notion of an ‘attitude towards a soul’; repression, love, conscience, the difficulties of self-understanding, and the methods and aims of philosophy. Through a combination of detailed, immanent criticism and bold constructive work, the authors move the discussion to a new level, beyond humanistic or conservative critiques of naturalism and scientism. (shrink)

Moral norms and values have in most cultures been taken to form a common moral space that is founded in culture. In the Western world this shows itself in etymology: The words ethos, mores, and Sittlichkeit all refer to cultural norms and traditions. The meaning of ‘common moral space’ can be understood in different ways, but in some version it forms the backbone of the views of most moral philosophers and psychologists including Kant and Freud. (I call this consensus ‘classical.’) (...) I mainly address Freud, but I also briefly discuss Kant. The idea that truth, rationality, meaning, language, and morality are essentially common and shared can be articulated in many ways from the Kantian idea of a kingdom of ends of .. (shrink)

Journal Name: SATS Issue: Ahead of print.

This introductory chapter argues that the great excitement around the discourse of mind is not generated by legitimate scientific expectations but by an obscure notion that uncovering the truth about the mind is simultaneously a very important and a morally uncommitted task. By contrast, we suggest that the ‘life of the mind’ is inevitably morally engaged, and that any meaningful analysis of the mind will enter into this morally charged field where ‘neutrality’ is impossible and truthfulness and philosophical adequacy are (...) themselves moral tasks. Critically discussing the technoscientific view of the mind, the idea of naturalism, the nature of ethics and the conception of philosophy as a theoretical endeavour divided into different sub-disciplines, the chapter also briefly describes the contents of the volume. (shrink)

Questions of ethics and the study of culture are tightly interwoven. Are we to see ethics as one thread in the fabric created by human culture or does ethics rather transcend culture? The discussions in this volume take place within this spectrum. Eleven Wittgenstein scholars explore how ethics is embedded in everyday activities and speech. The topics dealt with range from the ways we speak about human practices and nature, religious belief, gender, and moral understanding to questions about Wittgensteinâ (TM)s (...) views on ethics and what it means to understand and attend to a particular individual. Central points of departure are, firstly, that ethics cannot be reduced to any specific cultural form and, secondly, that how we conceive of language is crucially connected with how we perceive the relation between culture and ethics. The points of view put forth frequently pose radical questions to the mainstream of philosophy. The different uses to which Wittgensteinâ (TM)s thought is put also raise important questions about how one should understand the role of language, ethics and culture in his philosophy. (shrink)