David Malet Armstrong was born in 1926 in Melbourne, Australia. He studied philosophy at the University of Sydney before going to Oxford, taking the recently established B. Phil. degree in 1954. He taught briefly at Birkbeck College, London, before returning to Australia to teach at the University of Melbourne. He succeeded J.L. Mackie in Anderson's chair at Sydney in 1964, where he taught until his retirement in 1991. He died in 2014.

Foreword to the Routledge Classics Edition Peter Anstey Acknowledgements Preface to the 1993 Edition Introduction Part 1: Theories of Mind 1. A Classification of Theories of Mind 2. Dualism 3. The Attribute Theory 4. A Difficulty for any Non-Materialist Theory of Mind 5. Behaviourism 6. The Central-State Theory Part 2: The Concept of Mind 7. The Will (1) 8. The Will (2) 9. Knowledge and Inference 10. Perception and Belief 11. Perception and Behaviour 12. The Secondary Qualities 13. Mental Images 14. Bodily Sensations 15. Introspection 16. Belief and Thought Part 3: The Nature of Mind 17. Identification of the Mental with the Physical Bibliography Index