 The philosophical distinction between the concepts of mind and body is not to be confused with a real or metaphysical distinction as argued by Descartes. The claim that mind is a sui generis concept or category that is distinct from that of the body does not entail that it could exist apart from the body. Philosophical distinctions are intensional distinctions with no deep ontological implications. But the fact that they are not meant to cut reality at the joints does not mean that they do not carry any weight: those who fail to make the distinction between the concepts of mind and body are bound to fail to see a distinction between the normative/rationalizing explanations of actions and the descriptive/nomological explanation of events and espouse the view that the mind can be studied and understood in the same way as matter, by invoking causal laws. It is no surprise, therefore, that much of Collingwood’s later philosophy, his philosophy of history in particular, is devoted to defending the autonomy of the explanatory practices of history (which he took to be the science of mind) from those of natural science. Distinguishing the explanandum of history, i.e., (mind), from that of science (matter/nature) is the true task of philosophy, a task that, for Collingwood, has to be distinguished from what he takes to be the pseudo problem of an enquiry into the causal relation holding between the mind and the body. The true question concerning the relation between the mind and the body