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(2018) Freud and philosophy of mind I, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan.
Freud's argument, part 2
brain representationality as the essence of the mental
Jerome C. Wakefield
pp. 285-347
In this chapter, I complete my reconstruction of Freud's positive argument for the existence of unconscious mental states by providing a step-by-step account of Freud's philosophical argument that the mental-relevant essence of consciousness is brain representationality. I consider Freud's understanding of the mind–body problem in historical context, drawing on figures such as Fechner, Hughlings Jackson, and Titchener; Freud's perceptual model of consciousness and how it differs from Brentano's "inner perception" model; Freud's strategy of turning traditional psychophysical parallelism on its head to separate consciousness from the mental; and Freud's prescient hypothesis that brain representationality—representationality realized unconsciously in the brain—is the essence of the mental.
Publication details
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-319-96343-3_10
Full citation:
Wakefield, J. C. (2018). Freud's argument, part 2: brain representationality as the essence of the mental, in Freud and philosophy of mind I, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 285-347.
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