Persons and Minds

Persons and Minds is an inquiry into the possibilities of materialism. Professor Margolis starts his investigation, however, with a critique of the range of contemporary materialist theories, and does not find them viable. None of them, he argues, "e;can accommodate in a convincing way the most distinctive features of the mental life of men and oflower creatures and the imaginative possibilities of discovery and technology"e; (p. 8). In an extraordinarily rich analysis, Margolis carefully considers and criticizes mind-body identity theories, physicalism, eliminative materialism, behaviorism, as inadequate precisely in that they are reductive. He argues, then, for ramified concepts of emergence, and embodiment which will sustain a philosophically coherent account both of the distinctive non-natural character of persons and of their being naturally embodied. But Margolis provokes us to ask, what is an em- bodied mind? The crucial context for him is not the plain physical body as such, but culture. "e;Persons"e;, he writes, "e;are in a sense not natural entities: they exist only in cultural contexts and are identifiable as such only by refer- ence to their mastery of language and of whatever further abilities presuppose such mastery"e; (p. 245). The hallmark of persons, in Margolis's account, is their capacity for freedom, as well as their physical endowment. Thus he writes, "e; . . . their characteristic powers - in effect, their freedom - must inform the order of purely physical causes in a distinctive way"e; (p. 246).