An Inquiry Into Carruthers's Ontology Of Mind

There has been a so-called "Ontological Revolution" in the field of mind philosophy since more than three decades ago.Caruthers,a major student among the researchers, has created his own thought over this issue on the basis of previous study and established his system of thought, of which "Mind Ontology" is the cornerstone.In this paper, the author focuses on Caruthers' "Mind Ontology".This thesis consists of four parts.The first part is mainly about the origins of Caruthers's theory of mind. Including mental representation theory, Searle's mind theory and Levin's explanation theory. The mental representation theory rids of mysticism in Caruthers' "Mind Ontology" from a methodological perspective;the "Natural Theories of Consciousness" of Searle's mind theory is taken as his major idea by Caruthers and plays its role from an ontological perspective; Levin's explanation thought is the origin of Caruthers' "Explanation Gap".In the second part, the author mainly deals with the connotation of Caruthers1 "Mind Ontology".Firstly, Caruthers elaborates on the incommensurability between the mind and micro-being, pointing out that phenomenal awareness is not a simple assumption of reduction and there is a great deal of intricacy we cannot explain, which leads to the occurring of the "Explanation Gap" between these two.Secondly, Caruthers ontological thought is thoroughly manifested through the "Natural Theories of Consciousness" and is therefore ontology based on naturalism. He maintains that nothing but a natural individual,its nature and the relationships around it is real.Finally, he conducts analysis on the expressing relation between the mind and the being with the theory of "Explanatory Advantages".Both the base-level and advanced theories are likely to provide the reductive explanation for the features of things, but there is variance as far as the order of explanation is concerned. The base-level has the edge in the chronological order, while the advance theory outweighs it in explanatory degree.The "Explanatory Advantages" has also become the creative part of Caruthers' theory.In the third part, the author discusses the approach of Caruthers'"Mind Ontology",including the approach of the reduction theory, that of the dualism of property and that of the lack of systematic explanation which includes three deficiencies, such as the lack of research on the mind of others, absolutization of naturalism and ignoring of instinct. In the fourth part, the author explores on how to get out of the approach of Caruthers' "Mind Ontology" and proposes that the thought of neurobiology should be applied to the approach in the reduction theory, embodiment the dualism of property and context theory the lack of systematic explanation.