From Mind to Body and Back

Abstract

Without doubt, one of the most important questions that has kept philosophers busy, at least ever since the ancient Greeks, is the nature of the mind. Grappling with this question for ages, thinkers from various fields of inquiry have put forward their views concerning the mind and its nature. An interdisciplinary approach to the human mind has emerged in our contemporary era, where philosophy continuously supplements, inter alia, neurobiology and cognitive science with fresh perspectives on this issue. Philosophy’s role in advancing the debate surrounding it has certainly been central, and should be regarded as so by nonphilosophers as well. In a work recently published as part of the Cambridge Elements series, Janet Levin brings together the most important contemporary theories that attempt to answer the question of the mental. In her book, The Metaphysics of Mind (2022), she acknowledges that the metaphysical questions surrounding the mind should be distinguished from the epistemological and moral ones. While taking into consideration the implications of the epistemological and moral questions for the metaphysics of mind, Levin focuses primarily on the metaphysical questions.