Russell on Mind

Russell, in The Analysis of Mind tried to define mind as a kind of causal relation holding between some events.

Whitehead on Mind

Whitehead took relations (predicates) (eternal objects) as applying to other relations a conceptual and making up the mental pole of an actual occasion. When of sufficient complexity this resulted in consciousness.

Quine on Mind

Never mind.

Wittgenstein on Mind

The later Wittgenstein examines the use of mental words in detail, especially those which give rise to philosophical ideas. He always permits the ordinary use of the words, but just, it seems, because that is accepted linguistic behavior. One always feels he is, somehow, a behaviorist, although he permits mental language.

Dennett on Mind

Dennett is much like Wittgenstein. He permits the verbal descriptions. He explains how the language has survival value. But one feels he is missing something.

Darland on Mind

I am closest to Russell on this – Neutral Monism – I think events themselves are neither mental nor physical. What we experience as consciousness arises in complex sorts of events in our brains.

Probably the nature of events is closer to consciousness than matter, and physical causal relations only apply to abstract relations between events, as worked out partially by Whitehead in The Concept of Nature, The Principles of Natural Knowledge, and The principle of Relativity; and partially by Russell in The Analysis of Matter. Our consciousness is probably actually an event – our only specimen of one. We can guess other events are somewhat similar. We can only guess at this identity. But Tully = Cicero, while ‘Tully’ ~= ‘Cicero’, and believes-R(Tom,’~=’,’Tully’,’Cicero’) . So it is possible some event e in my brain = my consciousness c, even though I cannot know e = c, and ‘e’ ~= ‘c’, and most people do not believe this sort of thing at all. There are also probably identities between the behaviors Wittgenstein describes and mental facts, but which we can only infer. I would think the distinguishing factor between mental and non-mental events would be that the mental ones would involve the use of symbols.