Branch
Philosophy of mind
37 philosophers, 8 traditions
The mind, the soul and the self: consciousness, how mind relates to body, perception and thought, and what a person is.
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Philosophers
Listed where the reference works cited on their page describe significant work in philosophy of mind.
Western
PlotinusFounder of Neoplatonism, who taught that all reality flows from a single, indescribable source, the One, and that the soul can return to it.
René DescartesOften called the father of modern philosophy, he sought certain foundations for knowledge through methodical doubt and the insight 'I think, therefore I am'.
Elisabeth of BohemiaExiled princess whose letters to Descartes asked how an immaterial mind could move a body, and pressed him on the passions, virtue, happiness and how to rule.
Margaret CavendishSeventeenth-century philosopher, scientist and writer whose naturalism held that matter itself thinks: minds are material, and perception and reason run through the whole of nature.
William JamesPsychologist and philosopher whose Principles of Psychology described the 'stream of thought', and who made pragmatism famous with a theory of truth as what works.
Edmund HusserlFounder of phenomenology, who studied consciousness as it is experienced, bracketing our taken-for-granted belief in the world to reveal how things show up for us.
Henri BergsonFrench philosopher of time and life, famous in his day, who contrasted lived duration with measured time and explained evolution by a 'vital impulse'.
Edith SteinPhenomenologist and Husserl's assistant, known for her account of empathy, who after converting to Catholicism joined phenomenology to Thomist metaphysics; she died at Auschwitz.
Susanne LangerAmerican philosopher of symbolic form whose Philosophy in a New Key sold over 600,000 copies, and whose theory of art and feeling made her a leading philosopher of art.
Jean-Paul SartreFrench existentialist philosopher, novelist and public intellectual, who held that human beings are condemned to be free and responsible for what they make of themselves.- Maurice Merleau-PontyThe leading phenomenologist of post-war France, who made the lived, perceiving body the starting point for understanding mind, world, language and art.
Elizabeth AnscombeWittgenstein's student and translator, whose Intention founded modern action theory and whose 'Modern Moral Philosophy' urged philosophers to abandon the moral 'ought'.
Jerry FodorAmerican philosopher of mind who argued that thinking is computation over sentence-like mental representations, a "language of thought", and that parts of the mind are modular.
David LewisAmerican philosopher, one of the most important of the 20th century, known for his modal realism, his Humean metaphysics and his analysis of convention.
Jewish
Isaac IsraeliPhysician to the first Fatimid caliph and one of the earliest Jewish Neoplatonists, whose Arabic works, drawing on al-Kindi, were widely read in Hebrew and Latin translation.- Abraham Ibn EzraPoet, biblical commentator and astrologer from Tudela whose brief, cryptic remarks on God, the stars and the soul carried great authority in later Jewish thought.
Arabic and Islamic
AvicennaPhilosopher and physician who built a comprehensive system from Aristotelian and Neoplatonic ideas, known for the distinction between essence and existence.- AvempaceAndalusian philosopher who taught how the lone philosopher should live in an imperfect city, and rise towards union with the Active Intellect.
AverroesAndalusian judge and philosopher whose commentaries on Aristotle earned him the title 'the Commentator' in medieval Europe.
Mulla SadraPersian philosopher whose “transcendent philosophy” joined Avicennan, Illuminationist and mystical thought, arguing that existence, not essence, is what is real.
Indian
The BuddhaFounder of Buddhism, who taught that suffering arises from craving and can be ended, and that there is no enduring self.- PatañjaliAuthor of the Yoga Sūtras, the founding text of classical Yoga, which defines yoga as the stilling of the mind's activities and sets out the eight limbs of practice that lead to liberation.
VasubandhuBuddhist philosopher whose Treasury of the Abhidharma became a standard handbook, and whose later works argue that the world we experience is “mere cognition”.- ŚrīguptaIndian Madhyamaka philosopher whose Introduction to Reality gave the first complete Madhyamaka form of the 'neither one nor many' case for emptiness.
ŚaṅkaraThe pre-eminent teacher of Advaita Vedānta, who taught that the self (ātman) is identical with brahman, the one reality, and that plurality is not ultimately real.
Tibetan
Chinese
- Huan TanHan thinker who argued that the spirit depends on the body and dies with it, attacking belief in ghosts and quests for immortality, and set the critical tone of Eastern Han philosophy.
XuanzangBuddhist monk who spent sixteen years travelling to and studying in India, brought hundreds of texts back to China, and with his disciple Kuiji founded the Consciousness-only (Faxiang) school.
HuinengSemi-legendary Sixth Patriarch of Chan Buddhism, whose Platform Sutra teaches that Buddha-nature is our own nature and that awakening needs no study of texts.
Mazu DaoyiFounder of the Hongzhou line of Chan, famous for shock tactics and for teaching that 'ordinary, everyday mind is Buddha'.
Luo RufangMing Confucian of the Taizhou school who found goodness in the 'infant heart-mind', defended women's education, and held women more reliably virtuous than men.
Japanese
Takuan SōhōRinzai Zen master who linked Zen with the martial experience of his samurai students, describing an 'immovable wisdom' that stays still in the midst of action.
Nishida KitarōThe most influential Japanese philosopher of the twentieth century, founder of the Kyoto School, who grounded self and world in 'pure experience' and in the place of absolute nothingness.
Korean
JinulGoryeo monk, counted as founder of the Jogye Order, who shaped Korean Seon (Zen) with sudden awakening followed by gradual cultivation, and with keyword meditation.- Yi HwangJoseon Neo-Confucian, known as Toegye, whose Ten Diagrams on Sage Learning distilled Zhu Xi's thought, and whose Four-Seven Debate on principle and feeling defined Korean philosophy.
- Yi IJoseon Neo-Confucian, known as Yulgok, who argued against Yi Hwang that principle and material force always act together: material force issues, and principle rides on it.
- Kim IryeopWriter of Korea's "New Woman" movement who became a Seon Buddhist nun, and drew on Seon teaching to ask what the authentic self is and how a woman can be free.