Joseph Almog

Decartes' maxim Cogito, Ergo Sum (from his Meditations) is perhaps the most famous philosophical expression ever coined. Joseph Almog is a Descartes analyst whose last book WHAT AM I? focused on the second half of this expression, Sum-who is the "I" who is existing-and-thinking and how does this entity somehow incorporate both body and mind? This volume looks at the first half of the proposition-cogito. Almog calls this the "thinking man's paradox": how can there be, in the the natural world and as part and parcel of it, a creature that... thinks? Descartes' proposition declares that such a fact obtains and he maintains that it is self-evident; but as Almog points out, from the point of view of Descartes' own skepticism, it is far from obvious that there could be a thinking-man. How can it be that a thinking human be both part of the natural world and yet somehow distinct and separate from it? How did "thinking" arise in an otherwise "thoughtless" universe and what does it mean for beings like us to be thinkers? Almog goes back to the Meditations, and using Descartes' own aposteriori cognitive methodology-his naturalistic, scientific, approach to the study of man-tries to answer the question.

In his Meditations, Rene Descartes asks, "what am I?" His initial answer is "a man." But he soon discards it: "But what is a man? Shall I say 'a rational animal'? No: for then I should inquire what an animal is, what rationality is, and in this way one question would lead down the slope to harder ones." Instead of understanding what a man is, Descartes shifts to two new questions: "What is Mind?" and "What is Body?" These questions develop into Descartes's main philosophical preoccupation: the Mind-Body distinction. How can Mind and Body be independent entities, yet joined--essentially so--within a single human being? If Mind and Body are really distinct, are human beings merely a "construction"? On the other hand, if we respect the integrity of humans, are Mind and Body merely aspects of a human being and not subjects in and of themselves? For centuries, philosophers have considered this classic philosophical puzzle. Now, in this compact, engaging, and long-awaited work UCLA philosopher Joseph Almog closely decodes the French philosopher's argument for distinguishing between the human mind and body while maintaining simultaneously their essential integration in a human being. He argues that Descartes constructed a solution whereby the trio of Human Mind, Body, and Being are essentially interdependent yet remain each a genuine individual subject. Almog's reading not only steers away from the most popular interpretations of Descartes, but also represents a scholar coming to grips directly with Descartes himself. In doing so, Almog creates a work that Cartesian scholars will value, and that will also prove indispensable to philosophers of language, ontology, and the metaphysics of mind.

What Am I? is so-called because of its focus on Descartes’ primal question in the mind-body realm and his primal answer, viz. “a man”. The question and answer are primal in both senses of the adjective: they come first, early in meditation II, when the topic is broached for the first time; and, in my view of Descartes, they are also the most fundamental question and answer. There are other questions—many many other questions—Descartes raises about the mind-body problem. Some came to substitute for the primal question, e.g., What is Mind? What is Body? How are mind and body connected? What is the union of mind and body like? I have elected the primal question and answer partly because I understand them better and partly because I see this as Descartes’ ur-concern. Ultimately, he was after an account of what each of us is.

This chapter presents an introduction to David Kaplan. Topics covered include the influence of Church, Carnap, and Montague, from whom Kaplan got the eye for elegant formal codifications; Kaplan's admiration and adoption of the work of the German logician Gottlob Frege as the ground philosophical framework; his most influential work, _Demonstratives_, which presented his pioneering account of “direct reference” and what is essentially a two‐stage theory of meaning; and his separation of semantics and modal metaphysics.

The first page of Frege’s classic “Uber Sinn und Bedeutung” sets for more than a hundred years now the agenda for much of semantics and the philosophy of mind. It presents a purported puzzle whose solution is said to call upon the “entities” of semantics (meanings) and psychological explanation (Psychological states, beliefs, concepts). The paper separates three separate alleged puzzles that can be read into Frege’s data. It then argues that none are genuine puzzles. In turn, much of the Frege-driven theoretical development, motivated as an inevitable “solution”, is thrown into doubt.