Being neither a philosopher nor a neuroscientist, I can confidently claim that a round table discussion on the function of philosophical concepts in the neuromedical sciences would appropriately find me in the audience rather than at the table. At best my comments will tend to be historical and descriptive, not philosophical and prescriptive. Further, these comments will have a negative aspect, for my own historical researches have convinced me that, historically, the relationship between philosophy of mind and the neurological sciences has not been so fruitful as it might have been. One of the ongoing problems of the neurological sciences has concerned the nature of the nexus (if any) between mental function and neurological function. The history of neurology is littered with statements purporting to prove that this relationship corresponds with certain authors' metaphysical presuppositions. But the tradition of introspective philosophy and philosophical psychology has largely ignored the relational issue, and historically, philosophers by and large have not had to concern themselves with the physical basis of mind. Neuroscientists, on the other hand, have frequently accepted a philosophical account of mental phenomena which left them without an adequate conceptual framework for translating their neurological investigations into practical descriptions of behavior, mental activity, etc. Of course, part of the problem has stemmed from the technical difficulties inherent in brain research. But in other ways these difficulties are a residue of the Cartesian legacy which still casts shadows even on meetings like the present one.