The Mind Matters

David Hodgson is a judge of the Supreme Court of New South Wales. His previous publication with Oxford University Press is Consequences of Utilitarianism (1967).

• Introduction; Part I. Preliminaries: General approach and assumptions; Mental events; The consensus; Part II. Against Mechanism: More and different information; Plausible reasoning; Consciousness selected by evolution; Folk psychology; Transcending the code; Part III. Quantum Mechanics: Historical outline; Some mechanics and mathematics; The quantum mechanical state; The development of the quantum state; Combined systems; The measurement problem; Quantum theory and reality; Part IV. Mind and the world: Outline of a theory of mind; The self; Time; Sketches for a world-view; References; Author index; Subject index.

Mainstream professional philosophers of mind should perhaps feel humbled by the fact that while they have been satisfied for the most part with hanging on the coattails of currently fashionable theories in cognitive science and artificial intelligence, it has largely been left to those outside the profession, like David Hodgson, to pursue the most profound metaphysical questions concerning the relations between mind and matter - questions which cannot even be begun to be addressed adequately without an understanding, such as Hodgson has taken so many pains to acquire, of the most successful theory of matter that humanity has ever devised.