Herbert Feigl, The "Mental" and the "Physical": The Essay and a Postscript (1967).

Preface to Essay

I feel I should acknowledge my sincere indebtedness to the countless philosophers and scientists who have helped me by their publications as well as (in many instances) by personal discussion or correspondence to reach whatever clarity I may claim to have achieved. It is impossible to mention them all, but some stand out so distinctly and prominently that I should list them. Naturally, I have learned from many of these thinkers by way of disagreement and controversy. In any case none of them is to be held responsible for whatever may be wrong or confused in my views. My first acquaintance with philosophical monism goes back to reading the work of Alois Riehl; I found essentially the same position again in Moritz Schlick, some of whose work I had studied before I became his student in Vienna in 1922. I have profited enormously (although he may well think, not sufficiently) from discussions with my kind and patient friend R. Carnap intermittently throughout more than thirty years. During my Vienna years (1922-30) I was greatly stimulated by discussions also with Schlick, Wittgenstein, Victor Kraft, Otto Neurath, E. Kaila, Karl Popper, Edgar Zilsel, et al. I was greatly reinforced in my views by my early contact with the outstanding American critical realist C. A. Strong (in Fiesole, Italy, 1927 and 1928). Along similar lines I found corroboration in the work of Roy W. Sellars, Durant Drake, and Richard Gatschenberger, and in some of the writings of Bertrand Russell. Discussions (and many controversies) during my American years, beginning in 1930, with E. G. Boring, S. S. Stevens, P. W. Bridgman, C. I. Lewis, A. N. Whitehead, H. M. Sheffer, V. C. Aldrich, S. C. Pepper, E. C. Tolman, C. L. Hull, B. F. Skinner, K. Lewin, E. Brunswik, W. Kohler, Albert Einstein, H. Reichenbach, F. C. S. Northrop, and Philipp Frank proved most stimulating.

During the last three and a half years of the activities of the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science not only did I have the tremendous advantage of intensive discussions with my colleagues Paul E. Meehl, Wilfrid Sellars, and Michael Scriven, each of whom disagrees with me on several different fundamental points, and each for different reasons, but I also profited from discussions with such visitors or collaborators as Gilbert Ryle, C. D. Broad, Anthony Flew, Peter Strawson, Ernest Nagel, C. G. Hempel, A. Kaplan, Arthur Pap, Herbert Bohnert, Henry Mehlberg, Hilary Putnam, Gavin Alexander, William Rozeboom, and Adolf Grünbaum. Last, but not least, I owe a great debt of gratitude to my students at Minnesota who during many a year of seminar work in the philosophical problems of psychology have helped me through their criticisms to arrive at clearer formulations of my ideas and to eliminate various difficulties, mistakes, and confusions. It has been a veritable Odyssey of ideas for me, and I am by no means sure I have "arrived"!

Herbert Feigl, Director,
Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science
February 1957