Benjamín Flores

This is great question!

It is filled with many promising roads that end up nowhere, false starts from the beginning, and genuinely fruitful avenues of inquiry.

Let's start with what appeared to be a promising start and see where it led:

A classic in the field in the Anglo-American sphere of philosophy is Gilbert Ryle's The Concept of Mind (1949) with its famous image of "the ghost in the machine," essentially denying that there is anything else going on in the mind but the physical brain. Arthur Koestler, a briiliant polymath, took the metaphor as the title of his study, The Ghost in the Machine in his 1967 study.

Start with these two references and I will add more as we go on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Concept_of_Mind

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ghost_in_the_Machine

Regards,

Vincenzo Di Nicola

University of Montreal &

The George Washington University

Vincenzo Di Nicola Thanks a lot for your answer. I‘ve already found the books you mentioned, I will give them special time of my day-to-day.

Regards.

Benjamín Flores

The next readings I would recommend for you are related to the philosophy of science, the sociology of knowledge, and Foucault's work on both history and what he called the archaeology of knowledge and the history of madness.

For philosophy of science:

Stephen Toulmin:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Toulmin

And with Allan Janik, a classic:

https://www.amazon.com/Wittgensteins-Vienna-Allan-Janik/dp/1566631327

Along the way, it's important to read about the sociology of knowledge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_knowledge

Giambattista Vico is my own hero here, especially in The New Science:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Science

And you must be aware of Karl Mannheim:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Mannheim

Then read Georges Canguilhem and Thomas Kuhn (two giants) together:

Georges Canguilhem:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Canguilhem

Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions is essential background reading:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Kuhn

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Structure_of_Scientific_Revolutions

Then read Michel Foucault's The Order of Things and The Archaeology of Knowledge:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Foucault

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Order_of_Things

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Archaeology_of_Knowledge

And finally (for this grouping) - Foucault's Madness and Civilization (early translation) and The History of Madness (later, full translation):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madness_and_Civilization

https://archive.org/details/historyofmadness00fouc

You could also review The Birth of the Clinic for a better understanding of his thought:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Birth_of_the_Clinic

Without these basics, I think you cannot read the current approaches to philosophy of mind without getting lost - and this is a minimal map of the more accessible works.

Good luck!

Regards,

Vincenzo Di Nicola

University of Montreal &

The George Washington University

Benjamín Flores

To continue your reading on philosophy of mind, it's important to read key psychologist, psychiatrists and philosophers on this.

My friend, cognitive scientist Steve Pinker's entire body of work is relevant, especially this book:

How the Mind Works:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_the_Mind_Works

Philosopher Jerry Fodor responded with a rejoinder called The Mind Doesn't Work That Way:

https://archive.org/details/minddoesntworkth00camb/page/2

Then you may want to look at Nobel Prize winners in psychology and psychiatry:

Daniel Kahneman: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Kahneman

Eric Kandel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Kandel

Finally, you should be aware of the work of Daniel Dennett and Patricia Churchland:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Dennett

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patricia_Churchland

Happy reading!

Regards, Vincenzo Di Nicola University of Montreal & The George Washington University

Benjamín Flores

More on basic readings for philosophy of mind ...

The online Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy is a trustworthy and useful resource. Here is the article on The Mind/Brain Identity Theory:

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/mind-identity/

Thomas Nagel asked an interesting question:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_Is_It_Like_to_Be_a_Bat%3F

Daniel Dennett, while sharply disagreeing on some points, acknowledged Nagel’s paper as "the most widely cited and influential thought experiment about consciousness."

Regards,

Vincenzo Di Nicola

University of Montreal &

The George Washington University