Last August I chanced upon a forthcoming book by István Aranyosi. I’m pleased to say that my copy arrived today and I’m very much looking forward to reading it. Any book that opens with a Kafka quote suggests immaculate taste. Not only that, but the series of which this book is a part is edited than none other than Dave Chalmers who quickly saw the virtues of István’s work. Last, but by no means least, there is a very personal story behind the realization and motivation of the book, refreshingly different from the inflated egos of writers who get funding to spend six months in say, Vézelay, to do some writing and then very pretentiously sign off their preface Joe Blogs, New York and Vézelay.
I also look forward to a close-grained review that I have commissioned for The Journal of Mind and Behavior.
The Peripheral Mind introduces a novel approach to a wide range of issues in the philosophy of mind by shifting the focus of analysis from the brain to the Peripheral Nervous System (PNS). Contemporary philosophy of mind has neglected the potential significance of the PNS and has implicitly assumed that, ultimately, sensory and perceptual experience comes together in the brain. István Aranyosi proposes a philosophical hypothesis according to which peripheral processes are considered as constitutive of sensory states rather than merely as causal contributors to them. Part of the motivation for the project is explained in the autobiographical opening chapter, which describes the author’s subjective experiences with severe peripheral nerve damage.
Although Aranyosi’s approach could be classified as part of the current “embodied mind” paradigm in the philosophy of mind and cognitive neuroscience, this is the first time that notions like “embodiment” and “body” in general are replaced by the more focused concept of the PNS. Aranyosi puts the hypothesis to the test and offers novel solutions to puzzles related to physicalism, functionalism, mental content, embodiment, the extended mind hypothesis, tactile-proprioceptive illusions, as well as to some problems in neuroethics, such as abortion and requests for amputation of healthy body parts. The diversity of the volume’s methodology–which results from a combination of conceptual analysis, discussion of neuroscientific data, philosophical speculation, and first-person phenomenological accounts–makes the book both engaging and highly informative.
manwithoutqualities 