查看文章

With this contribution we outline a conceptual framework for the mind–matter problem that gives rise to a systematic and transparent classification of basic types of mind–matter correlations. We emphasize from the outset that this framework is not a scientific theory—although the argumentation is theoretical in style. The framework we propose provides no mechanism for mind–matter correlations, it does not explain them, and it does not predict their controllable occurrence under particular circumstances. In our opinion, a serious theory of psychophysical phenomena, one capable of providing mechanisms, explanations, and predictions, is not yet anywhere in sight. The classic starting point for most contemporary discussions of the mind–matter problem and mind–matter relations, respectively, is Descartes’ ontologically conceived dualism of the mental (res cogitans, thought) and the material (res extensa, extended matter). In the history of philosophy, Descartes’ position was immediately upgraded, criticized, or replaced by essentially three forms of thought:(1) alternative dualistic approaches (occasionalism, parallelism),(2) essentially monistic approaches (idealism, materialism), and (3) approaches combining (1) and (2) by assuming a monistic domain underlying the mind–matter distinction. An early protagonist of this latter view is Baruch Spinoza. Spinoza’s monism provides an elegant and robust sense in which mind and matter are related to a “unity of essence.” It does so by concatenating