John West wrote:

Hypatia wrote:

Hard to say, since I've always been something of a continentalist trying to fit myself into analytic categories. It tends to create more confusion than it solves.

So stop doing it! 
I seriously doubt that I'm the only one on here familiar with continental literature, and where we don't understand we can just ask for clarification or translation. The only thing I ask is that you avoid the kind of deliberate obscurantism Foucault famously quipped about. (I think the analytic-leaning philosophers on here do a pretty good job of avoiding the opposite danger, of insisting on a sort of specious clarity even when grubbing at the limits of intelligibility.)

Have I been obscurantist? If so, it hasn't been deliberate.

I didn't mean that I was trying to fit myself into analytic categories for the benefit of people here, though. I only have a B.A. in philosophy, which is a decade old now, and philosophy of mind is a much more recent interest. So I've been reading analytic philosophy of mind and trying to approach the problem on those terms, with Heidegger rolling around somewhere in the back of my mind, and I think Heidegger finally won. So I'm not sure how much my position has really changed--mostly it's been a process of disillusionment with the way the question has been asked at all.

I have concerns about dualism, partly because of phenomena like multiple personalities and split-brain surgery (though these seem to support a variety of views, depending on the research in question). I don't see how intentionality can be eliminated, so reducing mind to matter does not appear to work unless matter is conceived of teleologically. I don't think teleology entails dualism, though, so a non-naturalistic form of materialism looks like a fairly strong possibility. I have concerns with it, but I have more concerns with the alternatives.

I don't have a position here. Just bits and pieces of one.
 

John West wrote:

Hypatia wrote:

Have I been obscurantist? If so, it hasn't been deliberate.

No. That was a “Though, if you're planning to start writing more like a continental, I ask that you avoid certain pitfalls a lot of continentals fall into” kind of comment.

Haha, but making up your own words is fun!