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To
be published on May 15th, 2003, a new book by Celia Green:
The
Lost Cause
Causation and the Mind-Body Problem
Foreword by Professor Howard Robinson
Price
£16.95 ISBN 0-9536772-1-4
Publisher:
Oxford Forum ---------Distributor: Book Systems Plus
Tel. 01223 894870 Fax 01223 894871 e-mail BSP2B@aol.com
'What is
remarkable about the book is the way Celia Green has succeeded
in bringing together considerations from a wide range of disciplines:
philosophy, obviously, but also psychology, neuroscience and
fundamental physics. She has, in particular, made very skilful
use of her own empirical investigations. The result is, in my
view, most impressive.'
Dr Michael
Lockwood, University of Oxford
"Preface
to the book"
Comment
by Celia Green
The Lost
Cause is the book version of my Oxford DPhil thesis.
It will
not be obvious to any but professional philosophers how seriously
it undermines the goings-on in modern philosophy, worldwide,
and if it were too explicit, even to them, I would not have
got a DPhil for it. The following anecdote may make the real
state of affairs more obvious.
While writing
the thesis, I attended a series of seminars at the Department
of Philosophy in Oxford on the work of Donald Davidson (the
key figure in modern philosophy of mind). Everyone sat and took
it in as best they could, probably feeling that they would appear
stupid if they showed any signs of incomprehension.
After one
of the seminars, I and one of the other graduate students lingered
on, and I heard him approaching the lecturer with a question.
'If there is no causal connection between the mental and the
physical,' he said, 'how do I know, if I have a stomach-ache,
that it is caused by what is going on in my own stomach and
not somebody else's?'
The lecturer
regarded him with the benevolent, if vacant, smile reserved
for good students. 'That's a very interesting question,' he
said. 'How did you come to think of it? Have you been reading
a lot?' (Reading extensively is approved of.)
'No,' said
the student. 'I just thought of it.'
The lecturer
looked impressed, if slightly shocked, and continued to cogitate.
(Oxford philosophers often stand in silence in front of their
blackboards for considerable periods of time, engaged in difficult
internal debates about the problems which they have just brought
to the attention of their students.)
The student
repeated his question, with elaborations, a few times and the
lecturer continued smilingly to scratch his head. 'Well,' he
concluded, 'That is really a most interesting point. I don't
think there have been any papers written about it. This is clearly
an area where more work needs to be done.
And that is
why there is a crying need for a new and independent university
to be set up under my direction, which is not committed to politically
correct ideology, so that some genuine intellectual activity could
take place.
New book Lost
Cause for webpage April 2003
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