The Immaterial Self

Dualism is a doctrine engaged on two fronts. It affirms a thesis about the mind, in opposition to various forms of materialism and mental reductionism, and a thesis about the physical world, in opposition to various forms of mentalism and idealism. "The Immaterial" "Self" examines a dualist account of the mind, a defence of the Cartesian account in which the immaterial contents of the mind are assigned to an immaterial mental subject. Foster vigorously attacks alternative accounts of the mind--both those, like functionalism and the identity theories, which are opposed to dualism as such, and those which accept dualism in a Humean (non-Cartesian) form. In its final sections, the book develops positive accounts of the attachment of the self to the body, its power of free agency, and its role in personal identity.