Is the Problem of the Unity of the Mind a Pseudo-Problem?

Abstract

In the previous chapter I discussed the split-brain cases and the possibility of scattered agents and group minds. Given these imaginary entities, the task of determining where one mind begins and another leaves off, either within one brain or across several brains, calls for some tricky disentangling. We need a principled way of telling whether we have one mind or two, what the boundaries between minds should be, and what it is for several mental contents to belong to a single mind. The search for a criterion for the unity of the mind seems a valid philosophical task. However, this enterprise may be misguided and the problem of the unity of the mind spurious. Perhaps we only think that there is a problem because we are confused and in error. This is the influential view that P.F. Strawson expressed in his well-known essay on persons.¹