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On Identifying the Mental with the Physical

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Peter Smith
Peter Smith*
Affiliation:
University College of Wales, Aberystwyth
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Extract

Our states of belief and desire are no doubt supervenient on the overall pattern of our physical states. But can this minimal physicalist presumption be strengthened into a claim to the effect that our mental states are each identical with some specific corresponding physical state? A developed identity theory will need, in a sense to be made clear, a schema for specifying the physical state which is supposed to be identical with a given mental state. And there are problems in formulating such a schema. The special difficulties faced here by a type identity theory are well known, and will not be discussed further in this present paper. But equally, there are problems in constructing an identification schema for employment with a token identity theory.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 13 , Issue 2 , June 1983 , pp. 227 - 238
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1983

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References

1 See for example McGinn, Colin ‘Mental states, natural kinds and psychological laws,’ Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volume, 52 (1978).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Peacocke, Christopher Holistic Explanation: Action, Space, Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1979).Google Scholar I am grateful to Peacocke for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.

3 Peacocke, 117·18

4 It should be noted that what I here give as an identification schema is initially produced in Peacocke's book as a way of picking out the physical state which 'realizes’ a belief, and only later does Peacocke argue that we can and should identify a psychological state with its physical realization.

5 Evans, Gareth ‘Can there be vague objects?', Analysis, 38 (1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 See, for example, Mackie, J.L. ‘Causes and Conditions,’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 2 (1965).Google Scholar

7 See Dummett, Michael Truth and Other Enigmas (london: Duckworth 1978). 149.Google Scholar

8 Since first submitting this paper for publication in 1981 I have seen Hornsby's, Jennifer very interesting paper Which Physical Events are Mental Events?', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 81 (1980-81)Google Scholar where she also makes telling use of the result due to Gareth Evans which I employed in §II above.