The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical’: General Positions and the Concept of Knowledge

As we said in the Introduction, Herbert Feigl is generally considered the father of the reawakened interest in the mbp in this century. Spanning a period of some forty years (his first article on the psychophysical relationship appeared in 1934), Feigl's concern with the problem found its most extensive and systematic expression in the volume entitled The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical’, published in 1958. Certain theoretical and historical merits of this work should be pointed out immediately. Feigl approached the question of the relationship between mind and body with a deep awareness of its numerous scientific, epistemological, and ontological implications. He carried out his inquiry within a rather rich and stimulating context of positions and conceptions: logical empiricism, realism, materialism, behaviorism, the problems of reductionism and physicalism, the question of theoretical and observational languages, and so on. He firmly rejected doctrines that in one way or another refused to deal with the mbp out of hand: this is the case, in particular, with behavioral psychology (all too often incapable of considering the mental under any form but that of merely visible behavior) and with radical materialism, branded as “crass” by Feigl for its a priori refusal to recognize even the existence of anything else but matter. He was convinced, moreover, that a serious treatment of the mbp should provide an adequate account not only of the physical but also of the mental.