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A Materialist Fallacy of Mind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Roland Pucetti
Roland Pucetti
Affiliation:
University of Singapore
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Extract

… once it be granted that the concept of a mental state is the concept of a state of the person apt for the production of certain sorts of behaviour, the identification of these states with physico-chemical states of the brain is, in the present state of knowledge, nearly as good a bet as the identification of the gene with the DNA molecule.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 45 , Issue 173 , July 1970 , pp. 227 - 230
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1970

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References

1 A Materialist Theory of Mind, by Armstrong, D. M. (Routledge & Kegan Paul, London, 1968), p. 90.Google Scholar I have profited from discussions of this theory with Professor Armstrong.

2 This is allowed for, I think, by Armstrong's qualification as follows: ‘In the case of some mental states only they are also states of the person apt for being brought about by a certain sort of stimulus’ (p. 82—Italics his)

3 In what follows I am indebted to Professor John Hospers for a suggestion he made to me in conversation, though I am not certain he would endorse my exploitation of it in this form.