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Obviously this is a bit idiosyncratic, but the hope is to provide a useful desk
reference for philosophers of mind who require speedy access to a date or title as well
as a bit of context for it. There are a few lines of explanation for each entry I tried
to encapsulate as much of what matters most in a sentence. Obviously this almost
never works, but a narrative structure really does help think things through. The
narrative ends in 1949 with Ryles Concept of Mind. My excuse for stopping there is
that its difficult to say what the impact or meaning of these books and papers might
be, because we are too close in time to know. Forgive omissions it is very hard to
know which books and events should be included early on or during unfamiliar
centuries, and it gets extremely difficult as we approach the present.
800 BCE
Homeric poems taking shape between the late 9th and early 8th century they
characterise the soul thinly, as something lost at death, something which then howls
off to Hades.
600 BCE
Thales (fl. 600) might view psyche as a mover, force, or impetus, something which
initiates the movement of moving things, from animals and people to magnets.
Anaximenes (c. 585 c. 528) possibly believes that psyche holds a living thing
together and rules or controls it.
Pythagoras (fl. 530) accepts metempsychosis, possibly first to locate the soul in the
head.
500
Anaxagoras (c. 500 c. 428) seems to argue for a materialist world actuated by a
cosmic intelligence, Mind or Nous.
Heraclitus (fl.500) might believe that psyche is fire, somehow responsible for the
changes attending waking, sleeping and death.
Parmenides (early to mid 5th C) distinguishes between false appearances and reality as
revealed by reason, might flirt with idealism.
400
Empedocles (c. 495 c. 435) probably formulates the first theory of perception; his
talk of the cosmic psychological principles Love and Strife suggest panpsychism to
some.
Democritus (c. 460 c. 370) elaborates the atomism of Leucippus, including
materialist conceptions of perception and the soul, might be first to tie soul to
intelligence.
Socrates (c.469 c. 399), the man not the mouthpiece, might conceive of soul as the
bearer of moral qualities.
Plato (c. 427 c. 347) distinguishes soul from body, argues for immortality of the
soul, ties soul to reason, Phaedo; divides the soul into three parts: reason, spirit and
appetite, Republic.
Aristotle (c. 384 c. 322) offers an extended, systematic discussion of psychological
phenomena, De Anima and Parva Naturalia (c. 350); soul characterised as the form of
a living thing.
Epicurus (c. 341 c. 271) argues for a radical materialism and for the impossibility of
the soul surviving death.
300 BCE
Zeno of Citium (c. 335 c. 263) founds Stoic School, active until c. 520, which
perpetuates a variety of materialist notions of soul, typically conceived as a breathlike substance diffused throughout the body.
200 BCE
The Septuagint produced between 3rd and 1st centuries BCE; conceptions of the soul
and mental phenomena as depicted in the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek.
100
Lucretius (c. 98 c. 51) propounds and expands the philosophy of Epicurus,
producing the first philosophical treatment of mind in Latin, De Rerum Natura.
BCE / CE
Philo (c. 20 BCE c. 50 CE) blends Greek philosophy and Hebrew thought about the
soul.
100
The Church Fathers (end of 1st century to as late as 749 CE) subordinate philosophical
accounts of mind to scriptural ones, raise religious questions, and shape the
intellectual agenda accordingly.
Tertullian (c. 160 c. 225) advocates traducianism, argues that soul must be somehow
corporeal if it can be tormented in Hell, On the Soul.
200
Origen (c. 185 c. 254) holds that souls were created by God for contemplation but,
falling away in distraction, became enveloped in bodies, On First Principles.
1100
Averroes (1126 1198) Latin translations of his commentaries on Aristotle bring
Greek views on mind, through Islamic lenses, back to the West; also develops his own
complex psychology and metaphysics of the soul, Long Commentary on De Anima.
Vespasian Homilies (c. 1150) contain possibly the first use in English of a variation
on the word soul (sawle), meaning life or life-force.
1200
William of Moerbeke (c. 1215 86) undertakes a complete translation of Aristotle
into Latin (c. 1250).
Aquinas (c. 1224 1274) reinterprets Aristotle in the light of Christian teaching,
articulates full-blooded conceptions of mind, soul, intellect, memory, appetite, selfknowledge, imagination, perception, etc, Summa Theologiae.
1300
1700
Leibniz (1646 1716) argues for pre-established harmony, Discourse on Metaphysics
(1686).
Berkeley (1685 1753) writes an account of perception, Essay Towards A New
Theory of Vision (1709) and argues that to be is to be perceived, Principles of Human
Knowledge (1710).
Hartley (1705 1747) founds associationist school of psychology, Observations on
Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749).
Hume (1711- 1776) brings the experimental method to bear on mind, follows the
sceptical implications of empiricism through, propounds the bundle theory of self,
Treatise of Human Nature (1739), Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
(1748).
Adam Smith (1723 90) considers the nature of sympathy, The Theory of Moral
Sentiments (1759).
Kant (1724 1804) argues that the structuring activity of the mind makes possible a
world of experience; gives an account of reason, perception, judgement, the
understanding, imagination, etc a Copernican Revolution in the conception of mind,
Critique of Pure Reason (1781), Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Critique of
Judgement (1790).
Reid (1710 96) brings common sense to an account of sensation, conception, and
perception; uses memory to inform a notion of self, An Inquiry into the Human Mind
on the Principles of Common Sense (1764), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man
(1785).
Bentham (1748 1832) articulates modern psychological hedonism, Introduction to
the Principles of Morals and Legislation (1789),
1800
Hegel (1770 1831) gives an account of the evolution of consciousness as it plays out
in human history, The Phenomenology of Spirit (1807).
Schopenhauer (1788 1860) sees blind craving, will, at the depressing centre of
human action; our inner experience of it points to the hidden nature of all things, The
World as Will and Representation (1819).
J. S. Mill (1806 73) elaborates on the connection between right and wrong and
pleasure and pain; connects social and political reform to psychology, A System of
Logic (1843)
Kierkegaard (1813 1855) claims that subjectivity is truth, Concluding Unscientific
Postscript to Philosophical Fragments (1846).
Brentano (1838 1917) reintroduces the Scholastic conception of intentionality as the
mark of the mental, and his elevation of introspection paves the way for the
phenomenological movement, Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint (1874).
Nietzsche (1844 1900) calls the subject a grammatical fiction, On the Genealogy
of Morals (1887).
James (1842 1910) largely sets the agenda for both the philosophy of mind and
psychology by advancing influential accounts of the brain, the mind-body relation, the
stream of consciousness, memory, sensation, imagination, will, and emotions all
peppered with compelling introspective reports, The Principles of Psychology (1890).
Bradley (1846 1924) leads the turn towards idealism in the English-speaking world,
rejects empiricist psychology, The Principles of Logic (1883), Appearance and
Reality (1893).
Husserl (1859 1938) rejects psychologism and formulates the phenomenological
method, Logical Investigations (1900/1); the method of epoch and transcendental
phenomenology itself appear, Ideas (1913).
Wundt (1832 1920) investigates the self-examination of experience, Principles of
Physiological Psychology (1873/4), establishes a laboratory of experimental
psychology in 1879.
Bergson (1859 1941) offers an alternative to phenomenology, finds multiplicity in
consciousness, regards intuition as method, Time and Free Will (1889), Matter and
Memory (1896).
T. H. Huxley (1825 1895) memorably couches a version of epiphenomenalism in
terms of whistles and steam engines, On the hypothesis that animals are automata,
and its history (1874).
Peirce (1839 1914) raises objections to Cartesian methods and suggests
panpsychism, along with further thoughts on signs and representation, The Fixation of
Belief (1877), The Monist series (1891-1893).
1900
Freud (1856 1939), father of psychoanalysis, formulates such concepts as
repression, psychosexual motivation, unconscious desire, as well as the id, ego and
super ego, The Interpretation of Dreams (1900), The Ego and the Id (1923),
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis
Moore (1873 1958) brings commonsense realism to metaphysics and epistemology,
Refutation of Idealism (1903), Proof of an External World (1939).
Watson (1878 1958) gives the boot to consciousness in general and introspection in
particular, Psychology as a Behaviorist Views It (1913).
Whitehead 1861 1947 rejects materialism for the view that nature is a structure of
evolving processes, Process and Reality (1929).
Russell (1872 1970) champions analytic method, moves from reflection on sense
data to neutral monism, rejects idealism and psychologism, Knowledge by
Acquaintance and Knowledge by Description, (1910), The Analysis of Matter (1927),
The Analysis of Mind (1929).
Broad (1887 1971) argues for emergent vitalism, considers the possibility of
survival after death, The Mind and Its Place in Nature (1925).
Wittgenstein (1889 1951) early picture theory of meaning gives way to therapeutic
treatments of problems associated with mental phenomena; private language
argument makes trouble for Cartesian reflection and solipsism, Tractatus Logico-
Chisholm (1916 1999) Perceiving (1957), Person and Object (1976), The First
Person (1981), Brentano and Intrinsic Value (1986).
Chomsky (1928) Syntactic Structures (1957), Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965).
Geach (1916) Mental Acts (1957).
Malcolm (1911 1990) Our Knowledge of Other Minds (1958).
Feigl (1902 1988) The Mental and the Physical (1958, as a book with
Postscript and Preface, 1967).
Smart (1920) Sensations and Brain Processes (1959), Philosophy and Scientific
Realism (1963)
Strawson (1919 2006) Individuals (1959), Freedom and Resentment and Other
Essays (1974) Scepticism and Naturalism (1985).
Austin (1911 1960) Sense and Sensibilia (1959)
Armstrong (1926) Perception and the Physical World (1961), Bodily Sensations
(1962), A Materialist Theory of the Mind (1968), The Nature of Mind and Other
Essays (1980), Consciousness and Causality (1984), The Mind-Body Problem (1999).
Davidson (1917 2003) Actions, Reasons and Causes (1963), Mental Events
(1970), Essays on Actions and Events (1980).
Shoemaker (1931) Self-Knowledge and Self-Identity (1963), Identity, Cause and
Mind: Philosophical Essays (1984), The First-Person Perspective, and other Essays
(1996).
Lewis (1941 2001) An Argument for Identity Theory (1966), Psychophysical and
Theoretical Identifications (1972), Mad Pain and Martian Pain (1980),
Philosophical Papers, Volume II (1986)
Putnam (1926) The Nature of Mental States (1967), Mind, Language and Reality
(1975) The Meaning of Meaning (1975)
Dretske (1932) Seeing and Knowing (1969), Knowledge and the Flow of Information
(1981), Naturalising the Mind (1995), Perception, Knowledge and Belief (2000)
Kripke (1940) Naming and Necessity (1972), Wittgenstein on Rules and Private
Language (1982).
Williams (1929 2003) Problems of the Self (1973).
Nagel (1937) What is it Like to be a Bat? (1974), Mortal Questions (1979), View
from Nowhere (1986)