Abstract

This thesis is a critical study of some questions about the nature of the mind, particularly issues concerning the contents of mental states. The view that the mind, as an immaterial substance, is ontologically independent of the body can be traced back to Plato, and was most notably endorsed by Rene Descartes. Since the advent of modern science, positivism, and behaviourism, physicalism has gradually replaced Cartesianism and become an orthodoxy in the Anglo-American philosophy of mind. Although the dualist position has been shown to run into serious problems, the internalist conception remains the prevailing view of mental content. Internalism consists of two theses: the ontological thesis that mental phenomena are located exclusively inside the body, and the epistemological one that it is possible to understand the nature of the mind by focusing exclusively on what is inside the body. ;This thesis aims at refuting internalism. A preliminary observation shows that most externalist theories are only versions of non-internalism. Non-internalism can only argue against the epistemological leg of internalism. The major task of this essay is to establish and defend a substantively stronger position---anti-internalism, the thesis that there is no clear boundary between the mental and the physical, and thus that it is possible to consider something outside the body a constituent of a mental state. The author will also argue against the possibility of fully understanding the nature of the mind by focusing exclusively on what is inside the body. The conclusion to be drawn is that if anti-internalism is sound, then both the ontological and the epistemological thesis of internalism must be rejected, and so no version of internalism will be tenable. Finally, it will be shown that anti-internalism is not liable to objections arising from considerations about the logic of psychological explanation