Ko, Insok.  “How to Understand Human Mentality: A Whiteheadian Look at the Contemporary Mind-Body Debate.” The Journal of Whitehead Studies 2 (1999): 41-62.

Abstract

How is the mental aspect of the human being to be understood? What is the relation between "mind" and "body"? This is not only one of the most fundamental philosophical questions but it has also been the central topic of the interdisciplinary researches under the overarching title of "cognitive science" in the past couple of decades. The dynamic of the philosophical debate of the mind-body problem is, however, far from being settled.

Non-reductive physicalism, a mixture of ontological monism (physicalism) and epistemological dualism (anti-reductionism), is still acknowledged as the most influential approaches in this debate, yet is criticized as inconsistent by Jaegwon Kim (1993). On the other hand, neither reductionist physicalism nor dualism have been successful in formulating a consistent alternative view that explains our ordinary experiences adequately and comprehensively.

David R. Griffin (1999) argues that Whiteheadian philosophy will provide a solution to the mind-body problem. He sees Whitehead's ontology which he expresses as "panexperientialism with organizational duality" as providing the key to the solution. Although I share with him the anticipation that Whiteheadian philosophy will give us a novel and effective basis for an understanding of the mind-body problem, I find some deficiencies in his approach.

This paper discusses some implications of Whiteheadian metaphysics for the contemporary mind-body debate. Within the Whiteheadian scheme of metaphysics, as presented in Process and Reality, the possibility (and also existence) of mental causation is not incompatible with the fact that human mentality is "the outcome of the human body"(PR 108). "Physical" and "mental" are interpreted as two "poles" of an actual entity. Each of them can be analysed only through "abstraction" from concrete experiences. This paper also addresses the issue that the concept of body is too narrowly interpreted in most of the recent discussions of the mind-body problem.  [Abstract from The Journal of Whitehead Studies]