The Polypotent Mental Processor: A new approach to the mind-body problem - Hardback

The mind is considered as mysterious because it is not given in any sense perception. Psychologists try to understand the mind through experiments in psychophysics through various measurements on sensory and cognitive capabilities. To establish a relationship between the mind-body is even more vexed as the body is given to us in sense perception and the mind is not. The mind is considered as higher level as it depends on the neural correlates. The instantiation of these neural correlates is identified with the conscious psychological processes. A causal relationship of how the higher-level exerts an influence over the lower-level, to alter the lower-level is referred to as Downward Causation. If the mind has the capacity of Downward Causation then alone psychology can be said to have autonomy. This autonomy requires that mind is not identified with the brain. The author argues for not only a philosophical claim but a scientific claim, that as token identity is falsified through multiple realizability the type identity of mind-brain can be falsified by the argument of polymentation.