Looking at the development of Professor von Wright's philosophy, one could be surprised by the fact that, until very recently, he didn't appear interested in the mind-body problem. In his "Intellectual Autobiography", written in 1972–73, for example, von Wright writes — referring to his youthful interest in the mind-body problem and the other fundamental metaphysical questions about the nature of reality — that 'strangely enough, this is an aerea in which, as an active philosopher I have (so far) done no work at all".¹