An important work in the debate between materialists and dualists, the public correspondence between Anthony Collins and Samuel Clarke provided the framework for arguments over consciousness and personal identity in eighteenth-century Britain. In Clarke's view, mind and consciousness are so unified that they cannot be compounded into wholes or divided into parts, so mind and consciousness must be distinct from matter. Collins, by contrast, was a perceptive advocate of a materialist account of mind, who defended the possibility that thinking and consciousness are emergent properties of the brain.
Appendices include philosophical writings that influenced, and responded to, the correspondence.
- ISBN13 9781551119847
- Publish Date 21 October 2011
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 12 March 2021
- Publish Country CA
- Imprint Broadview Press Ltd
- Format Paperback
- Pages 368
- Language English