Part I: Reconciling Natural and Mental Philosophy

Part I introduces the problem, the aims of the project, and some of its background.

• Chapter 1 introduces the subject and ideas of the book in the context of understanding the mind and constructing mechanical persons.
• Chapter 2 discusses the benefits of the mechanical approach, especially in shedding new light on questions of materialism and new methods for characterizing limits to rationality.
• Chapter 3 explores in greater detail the mechanical viewpoint and its history, briefly relating the project to past efforts on mechanical interpretations of psychological and economic phenomena as an aid to understanding better the subsequent development.

Part II: Reconstructing Rational Mechanics

Part II explains the structure of modern rational mechanics and reformulates the axiomatic development in a manner appropriate to hybrids of continuous, discrete, physical, and mental mechanical subsystems.

• Chapter 4 summarizes the theoretical structure of modern rational mechanics, including the modern conception of physical law and the division of mechanical laws into general and special laws.
• Chapter 5 develops the kinematic axioms of mechanics, generalizing the usual axioms to accommodate discrete aspects of space, hybrid mechanical systems, and indeterministic worlds.
• Chapter 6 develops the dynamical axioms, which parallel the usual developments in most respects, evidencing the modesty of the reformation of mechanics needed to cover psychology and economics.
• Chapter 7 reconsiders several characteristics of mechanical systems in light of the reconstruction of kinematical and dynamical axioms, including determinism, continuity, conservation principles, least action principles, reversibility, and locality.

Part III: Mechanical Minds

Part III presents mechanical formalizations of key psychological and economical notions.

• Chapter 8 notes the wide variety of mental organizations presumed or postulated by theorists in many fields, identifies one special class involving plural, discrete, affective cognition for special examination, and summarizes the structure of the Reason Maintenance System, or RMS, that illustrates this class of psychologies.
• Chapter 9 uses the mechanical formalism to examine mind--body duality and the plurality inherent in mental organization and faculties.
• Chapter 10 sets out the basic framework of discrete mechanical motion, mass, and force underlying the analyses of the following chapters.
• Chapter 11 takes a detailed look at simple reasoning patterns as exemplifying mechanical forces, and then offers speculative relations between these simple forces and more complex mathematical concepts and mechanical phenomena.
• Chapter 12 analyzes the mechanical nature of rationality and limits on rationality, including effort, volition, inherent intelligence, and the forces generated by desire, intention, habit, refraction, and other rational motives.
• Chapter 13 characterizes learning in terms of mechanical concepts of mass, persistent configuration, plastic deformation, and relaxation responses to applied forces.
• Chapter 14 studies mental uncertainty as a mechanical phenomenon, constructing a straightforward theory of measurement that yields structures akin to subjective probabilities and weakness of will, and then presenting a speculative subjective measurement structure with connections to concepts of quantum theory.

Part IV: The Metaphysics of Mechanics

Part IV discusses a number of mainly philosophical characteristics of physical theories in relation to mechanics.

• Chapter 15 discusses implications of the mechanical axioms for traditional philosophical questions of materialism, especially similarities between the numerous past broadenings of concepts of materialistic theories and the present further broadening to the materials of psychology and economics.
• Chapter 16 addresses the reducibility of physical law to behaviors of elementary particles, and considers related topics including the possibility of discovering additional physical laws, the uniformity of physical laws, and other topics connected with the completeness of physics.
• Chapter 17 relates mental mechanics to notions of effective computation, both to understand computation in mental terms and to understand the relation of effectiveness to mechanical theory.
• Chapter 18 examines issues pertaining to the finiteness or infiniteness of the universe, especially as these relate to discrete models of mechanics as developed here.

Part V: Conclusion of the Matter

• Chapter 19 summarizes and assesses the work, identifies some additional issues for future exploration, and reflects on the history of some of the ideas.