Sandro Nannini
I am a retired full professor of Theoretic Philosophy and Philosophy of Mind of the University of Siena (Italy). My work field is the philosophy of mind and cognitive sciences. I defend a naturalistic and physicalistic solution of the Mind-Body Problem.
Phone: 0393496764140
Address: Strada di Busseto 61 53100 Siena (Italy)
Phone: 0393496764140
Address: Strada di Busseto 61 53100 Siena (Italy)
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This behavioral approach to the mental was criticized and largely abandoned in the 1960s and 1970s by the supporters of physicalism (or mind-brain identity) and functionalism. Neither the physicalists nor the functionalists wanted to return to the Cartesian dualism. Nevertheless, they thought that being anti-Cartesian does not imply to accept behaviorism. They distinguished dualism from mentalism. In contrast to the behaviorists, they thought that mental states are real internal causes of behavior (and not simply behavioral dispositions) even though these internal causes are not identical to very mysterious spiritual events, as it is supposed by dualists. They are normal brain processes that can be described either directly in neurological terms (physicalism) or more abstractly in functional terms, i.e. by comparing them to a software implemented by a brain activity that is difficult to directly reconstruct (functionalism).
Since the 1980s functionalism has been (and is still now) harshly criticized by many points of view. Scientific dignity has been restored to the study of consciousness. However, within this return to the study of consciousness it is necessary to distinguish the approach of those who essentially re-propose a return to Cartesian dualism or to the phenomenology of E. Husserl from the point of view of those philosophers or neuroscientists who especially since the 1990s intend to completely renew the traditional conception of the mental in the light of new experimental data and new theories on the brain offered by cognitive neuroscience (e.g. G.M. Edelman and G. Tononi among the neuroscientists and C.D. Dennett and the Churchlands among the philosophers).