CHAPTER!

IDENTITY THEORY: INTRODUCTION

1.1 Historical Antecedents

Every branch of study has its history and this is also true in the
case of philosophy. It is also true that philosophical theories are
formulated in response to earlier ideas with regard to a philosophical
issue. Identity theory too has its historical antecedents.

The recorded history tells us that both philosophers and non-

philosophers have struggled to give answer to the question- what
exactly is mind? Although the question is simple its answer is not easy
to give. Some propose that mind is a spiritual entity and temporarily
resides in body. It enters into body at the time of birth and leaves it on
death. Others propose that there is an intimate relation between mind
and body although they do not consider mind as an entity. Mind exists
when body is organized in a particular way, and when this particular
organization is destroyed, mind becomes nonexistent. Over and above
these two views, there is a third opinion according to which mind is an
entity and this entity is physical. Mind is just Brain. All these answers
are controversial theories of mind.

But we shall not discuss all these views in this section. We will
highlight those theories that triggered the views of the thinkers who
contributed to the emergence and development of the Identity Theory
of Mind.

In the modem era philosophy of mind effectively begins with the

work of Rene Descartes. It can be firmly admitted that the problem of
mind was not introduced by Descartes first. It is a problem that has been
treated as one of the central problems in Anglo-Saxon philosophy from
early Greek period. However, Descartes view was most influential in
modem philosophy of the seventeenth century and afterwards. His
views were so influential that many of his views were accepted by
people of then uncritically. Descartes theory of mind is known as
dualism. This theory proposes the existence of two entities - mind and
body, two distinct substances. As he accepts the reality of two
substances, his dualism is sometimes called "substance dualism". In
describing the nature of mind and body Descartes says that the essence
of mind is consciousness or thinking and the essence of the body is
extension. Descartes further maintains that the essences of both mind
and body have different modes or modifications. Being extended, body
can be divided indefinitely. But this is not possible in case of mind.

Descartes theory of mind-body may be summarised in the table

below:

Substance
Mind Body
Thinking
Essence Extension (having spatial dimension)
(consciousness)
Known directly Known indirectly
Free Determined
Properties
Indivisible Infinitely divisible
Indestructible Destructible
 Descartes firmly states that in spite of their opposite nature, both
mind and body influence each other and there is a causal relation
between the two and that is why his theory is also known as
interactionism.

This theory of Descartes created endless debates. Critics have

pointed out that Descartes, instead of solving the problems left us with
a number of problems. There are several problems in his theory but the
most vital problem is to explicate the exact relation between the mental
and the physical. How can there be a causal relation between two
completely different entities? How does anything in the body cause
anything in the mind and vice versa? This problem that Descartes left
for us is commonly called the "mind-body problem". All the
subsequent philosophers who worked on the philosophy of mind
concerned themselves with this problem. But the problem remains a
vibrant one in contemporary philosophy in spite of considerable
progress made over the centuries.

The question that Descartes answered and left it incomplete re-

emerges in its modem version as, 'How can brain processes produce
mental phenomena at all? Or 'How can brain cause mind?' This
question is a specific form of the question 'How can anything physical
produce an effect inside the soul, which is non physical? Another
question is how can events in some one's soul affect the physical
world? Descartes probably did not think of such questions. Descartes
did not think of a general question like 'how can a mental substance
arise out of neurobiology?' His question was that how an injury of the
body produces a specific mental event such as feeling a pain. In
contemporary literature, the very existence of the mind is explained by
the operation of the brain, a hypothesis which Descartes did not think
of. His only question was how an event occurring in the body could
cause specific thoughts and feelings like sensation of pain.

Moreover, we surely and certainly believe that our bodies with

their brains are conscious, which Descartes did not believe. According
to him, as the material objects like chairs, tables, houses or any other
hunk and junk are unconscious; so are our bodies and brains. It is only
souls which are conscious and these conscious souls are separate from
the body although somehow these are attached to human bodies.

In addition to this fundamental difficulty of relating mind with

body, Descartes' dualism suffers from many other defects. Descartes
tries to answer the critics, but it can be surely stated without exception
that Descartes' answer was inadequate. Descartes himself was also
aware of the inadequacy of the answer. He never felt that the problem
of the causal relation of mind and body had been resolved by him.This
failure of Descartes gives credence to the belief that substance dualism
in any form is unable to solve the mind - body problem.

It is true that the problem of causal relation between mind and

body is inherited by all forms of substance dualism. The followers of
Descartes face an additional problem. It appears that substance dualism
is very much inconsistent with modem physics. Physics categorically
states that the total amount of matter or energy in the universe remains
constant. It never increases nor decreases. But contrary to the claim by
modem physics, it is implied by substance dualism that spiritual or
mental energy is not fixed by Physics. Thus substance dualism goes
against the fundamental laws of Physics known as Laws of
Conservation of Matter and Energy. If substance dualism is correct,
then the laws of Physics are false and if the laws of Physics are correct.
then substance dualism must be incorrect. Acknowledging the threat
modern physics pose, some substance dualists attempt to resolve the
problem in another way. According to them, for each infusion of
spiritual energy, there is a diminution of physical energy. By saying
this, they attempt to go with Physics that the total amount of energy in
the universe is constant.

Other substance dualists also tried to resolve the problem in

another way. According to them, mind has the power to rearrange the
distribution of energy in the universe and in this rearrangement it does
not add to it or subtract from it any amount of energy.

The extreme doctrine of substance dualism maintains that like

other material objects such as car, television set etc., our bodies are
unconscious. Like plants our bodies are alive but having no
consciousness. This extreme dualism also maintains that our brains are
nothing more conscious than our bodies. It supposes that our souls are
conscious and this conscious soul is somehow attached to our bodies
and these bodies appear as conscious. The attachment of soul and body
remains intact until the body dies. When body perishes, the soul departs
from the body.

But this extreme theory of substance dualism is also not

supported by the scientific hypothesis that without certain sorts of
physical processes in the brain, human consciousness cannot exist. In
principle it is possible to produce consciousness in some other physical
substance but yet we may not know the way of doing this. It may be a
conceivable idea that apart from any physical substrate, the idea of
consciousness might be produced. But such an idea is not supported by
the scientific hypothesis.
 Apart from substance dualism, another form of dualism is there
which is known as 'Property Dualism'. This is a weaker version of
dualism but fairly widespread. This theory tells us that there are two
types of properties- physical properties and mental properties. This
theory does not accept the existence of two kinds of substances in the
world. By physical properties they mean those properties such as,
having an electrical charge, or having a certain mass. The properties
like feeling a pain or thinking about something are mental properties.
This dual property theory also accepts that there are physical bodies of
human minds and in particular accepts that human brains possess both
physical and mental properties.

The theory of property duality does not postulate separate

existence of a mental substance. Nevertheless this theory inherits some
of the problems of substance dualism. Like substance dualism, the
property dualism also fails to answer the questions of the relation
between the mental and the physical. If the physical properties of a
thing really cause mental properties of that thing then in what process
this is done remains unexplained. Moreover, a further problem for the
property dualists is that- if there be really mental properties, how can
they function causally to produce anything physical? How can
someone's conscious states, which are taken to be non physical features
of the brain, function to cause any physical properties in the world?

Thus the failure of dualism, both of substance dualism and

property dualism obviously turns the philosophers into monism
according to which there is only one kind of thing in the universe.
Monism is of two types - mentalistic monism and materialistic
monism. Mentalistic monism is called "Idealism" and the materialistic
monism is simply called "Materialism". The central point of idealism
is that the entire universe is mental or spiritual. According to an idealist,
there exists nothing but 'ideas' and every mental phenomenon is an
idea. The famous idealist George Berkeley believes in the reality of
mind in addition to ideas. This mind is taken by him as the container of
ideas. But here we shall not deal with idealism but shall confine our
discussion only to materialistic point of view as because the purpose of
our dissertation is to solve some of the problems that the materialistic
theory like Identity Theory has been facing. Idealism is an alternative
conception of reality which in a sense escapes the problem of mind and
body. This view is kept outside the scope of the present study.

We find a family of views in the philosophy of mind ranging

from 20'^ century to 21^' century. Of these views the single and most
dominant one is in one form or another of materialism. According to
materialism, material or physical reality is the only reality that exists.
This theory proposes that if there is a real existence of mental states,
these must be reducible to physical states or these are nothing but
physical states. In explaining the nature of mind, a famous materialist
philosopher Maurich Comforth says,

"According to materialism, so far mind being separate from the

body, all mental functions depend on their appropriate bodily organs
and cannot be exercised without them. All people's conscious and
intelligent activities can be traced back to material causes, so that far
from such activities being exclusive product of mind, mind itself is a
product - the highest product - of matter".'

But this materialism is treated as one form of religion in present

time by many thinkers of the opposite camps. According to them,

I M.Comforth (1997). Dialeclical Malcrialism, p-288

 8

materialism is as much dogmatic as the traditional religion was. In

explaining the drawbacks of materialism, John Searle says that different
versions of materialism fail to recon some essential mental features of
the universe that Searle and others believe to exist. In this connection
Searle mentions two essential features of mental states viz.,
consciousness and intentionality. He thinks that we all intrinsically
have these two states which is denied by the materialists and as such
they fail to give us a completely satisfactory account of the mind.

In the 20^*^ century, Behaviourism is the earliest and influential

form of materialism. The crudest version of this theory is that, "To
attribute a mind to something is to attribute to it certain behavioural
dispositions; to have the relevant dispositionsyw^^ is to have a mind".^

Behaviourism does not accept the existence of mind apart from

the behaviour of the body. Behaviourism is of different types. Identity
theory came into existence rejecting logical behaviourism.

Logical behaviourism holds that statements about mental

phenomena can be translated into a set of hypothetical statements about
behaviour. This theory believes that translatablity does not mean
presently existing behaviour but can be translated into a set of
statements about that person's actual and possible behaviour. A mental
state means to have the behavioural dispositions. The fore runners of
logical behaviourism are Gilbert Ryle (1949) and later Wittgenstein
(1953). Ryle in his book The Concept of Mind writes, "Dispositional
words like "now", "believe", "aspire", "cleaver" and "humorous" are
determinable dispositional words. They signify abilities, tendencies or

2. Edward Feser(2009), Philosophy of Mind, p- 6 1 .

pronenesses to do, not things of one unique kind, but things of lots of
different kinds''.^

Behaviourism as a theory in psychology or philosophy reigned

supreme up to the middle decades of the twentieth century. But this
theory fails to solve a lot of problems and the difficulties of this theory
had led to its general weakening and subsequently this theory lost all
its appeal.

Thus so far we have discussed the historical preliminaries of the

identity theory. But there was also a philosophical background of this
theory which we will explore now.

The philosophical climate that we delineated in the above was

changed in the English-speaking world after a long twenty five years.
Wittgenstein's posthumous work - Philosophical Investigation
published in 1953 was a crucial influence on this change. There was
also a parallel development that we see in the United States amongst
the members of the original Vienna Circle.

There were a number of consequences of this development and

for the subsequent restatement of the Mind-Brain Identity Theory in the
late 1950's these were very crucial. First of all, this development
revived interest in the work of Frege, particularly his distinction
between sense and reference. Feigl (1958) and Smart (1959) developed
the doctrine of contingent identity where the distinction of sense and
reference appears as fundamental one. Moreover, Wittgenstein's
private language argument (1953) together with Austin's critique of the

3 G. Ry\e (1949). The Concept of Mind, p-114

 10

argument from illusion in his Sense and Sensibilia led to the dramatic
collapse of phenomenalism and of Berkeleyan form of idealism.

So far we have discussed the historical background of the

Identity Theory of mind - body relation and found that the failure of
dualism and behaviourism, have much effect for the development of
this theory. Here we did not discuss the theory of Behaviourism in
details because there is a specific chapter allotted for this theory. The
next section of the present chapter we shall explain the Identity Theory
of mind. But before going to close this section let us delineate the
different chapters of the present Dissertation.

This Dissertation is divided into five chapters. Bach chapter is

constituted by its different sections. The First Chapter of this
dissertation will contain three sections. Of these, section - 1 is allotted
for discussing the Historical Antecedent of the Identity Theory where
we have discussed briefly the origin of the mind - body problem in
modem era. The next section of this chapter we shall explain The
Nature of Identity Theory. In this section, we will try to find out the
origin of the theory and how this theory developed in the hands of its
exponents particularly by its prominent advocates like U. T. Place, H.
Feigl, J. J, C. Smart. Not only this, the views of some other thinkers
who have contributed to this theory will also be incorporated in this
dissertation. The third section of this chapter will contain the two types
of Identity Theory viz.. Type and Token Identity Theory.

The second chapter of this dissertation is entitled - Identity

Theory: Critique of Paradigms. This chapter is sub divided into two
sections. Section I discusses Behaviourism and section II is about
Functionalism. We have chosen these two theories because
 11

Behaviourism is the theory reacting to which the Identity Theory came

into existence. It is therefore necessary to have a detailed discussion of
this theory. Again, FunctionaUsm is a more refined theory than
behaviourism and pre supposes a materiaUstic account of mind which
also needs a closer scrutiny.

In the third chapter we shall try to find out the different problems
that have been facing by the Identity Theory. This chapter is sub
divided into three sections. In the section I we discuss the problem of
Consciousness. Section II is allotted for the problem of Identity and
section III, the Problem of Co existence.

In the fourth chapter of this dissertation attempt will be made to

resolve the problems of the Identity Theory.

Finally, fifth chapter is allotted for concluding chapter where we

briefly outline the outcome of the dissertation.

1.2. Nature of Identity Theory

Mind- body problem is a genuine problem in the history of

philosophy. This problem arises at two levels. The first one is the
general issue which concerns with the relation between a subject's
mental states and his possession of a body. Here body includes
observable behaviour of the person. The second level is that of a
relation between a subject's mental states and certain internal physical
states. Here internal states of the organism particularly mean states of
the central nervous system. Of these two levels, the first is called by
Bernard William the 'Macro level' and the second is the 'Micro Level'.
At the Micro level one tries to characterize most economically and
 12

illuminatingly the correlation between mental states and internal states

of the individual. Recently a group of philosophers contributed to this
area and their views has often been called the 'Identity Theory' or
'Central State Materialism'.

The Identity theory of mind occupies an important place in the

history of philosophy. This theory is one of the important
representations of the materialistic philosophy. This theory is known as
"Materialist Monist Theory of Mind". Sometimes it is called "Type
Physicalism", "Type Identity" or "Type-Type Theory" or "Mind-Brain
Identity Theory". This theory appears in the philosophical domain as a
reaction to the failure of Behaviourism. A number of philosophers
developed this theory and among them U. T. Place, J. J. C. Smart,
Herbert Feigl, D. Armstrong, and David Lewis are prominent. The
main thesis of this theory is-states and processes of the mind are
identical to states and processes of the brain. Now we shall discuss the
viewpoint of these thinkers in different sub sections.

1.2.1 View of Place

U. T. Place openly admitted that in the 1930's psychologist E. G.

Boring introduced the idea of Type Identical or Mind-Brain Identity
Theory but elapsed nearly a quarter of a century without any
recognition and acceptance by the philosophical community. Boring in
his book entitled "The Physical Dimensions of Consciousness"
published in 1933 states his views as follows:

"To the author a perfect co-relation is identity. Two events that

always occur together at the same time in the same place, without any
temporal or spatial differentiation at all are not two events but the same
 13

event. The mind- body correlation as formulated at present, do not

admit of spatial correlation, so they reduce to matters of simple
correlation in time. The need for identification is no less urgent in this
case.'"*

There are several reasons for which Boring's view was not
accepted at that time either to the psychologists or to the philosophers.
In the field of psychology Behaviourism was leading school with
regard to philosophical and methodological issues and that is why
Boring's view failed to command the serious attention of psychologists.
Similarly, in the field of philosophy his theory was not appreciated as
because time was not yet ripe for the discipline to incorporate such a
revolutionary doctrine. Moreover, it was also supposed to be a
disqualification for Boring that he was belonging to the category of
psychologist who wrote for psychologists. His theory could not occupy
the forefront place of logic also. The logicians of that fime did not
consider identity theory as a topic for their discussion. Although Frege
was working on this topic but outside the periphery of Vienna Circle
his theory was virtually unknown. At that time it was a golden time for
phenomenalism to ride high and this theory developed a new concept
known as 'sense datum theory.' It was not successfiil. Furth, Logical
Positivism was also unable to give a satisfactory solution to the mind-
body problem at that time. This was an advantage for Boring's theory.
It was considered as an alternative solution to this problem. Moreover,
it was the commitment of Boring to combine the identity theory with
that of phenomenalist account of sense-datum or sensory qualities.
With this end in view he continued his work. Thus although Boring was

4 E. O. Boring (1933), The Physical Dimensions ofConsclousness, p-16

 14

the initiator of tlie Identity Theory he got his recognition after a long
period of time.

Identity theory of mind holds that certain physical states of the

brain and mental states are identical. In other words, this theory held
that the so-called mental phenomena, like thoughts, feelings, wishes
and the rest are identical with the bodily states and processes. Thus to
have some specific kind of thought there must be some kind of specific
states and processes of the bodily cells. When we say that someone is
in a certain mental states it implies that in the cerebral cortex of the
brain of that person a certain physical event is going on. In that case
although the person concern may not be aware of the happenings of
brain but these two are identical. It is not the case that these two states
are correlated with each other rather these two states are one and the
same event in literal sense.

But the term 'identity' is ambiguous. It is used in two different

senses. These are-

(1) exactly the same, and

(2) one and the same thing.

When someone says that one piece of marble is identical with

that of another, it means that the characteristics of these two marbles
are exactly the same. It may be the case that it is impossible to have two
identical marbles in the world possessing similar characteristics but
supposing that there are, then the term 'identical' is used in the first
sense. But in addition to similar characteristics, spatio-temporal order
is counted as an essential characteristic. But logically it is impossible,
because no two things occupy same place at the same time. It is one
thing that occupies same place at the same time not two. Thus, in that
 15

case, there cannot be two but one marble. Thus in the first case the term
'identical' is used in having same properties, barring spatio-temporal
properties.

In the second sense the term 'identical' means numerical

identity. When we say that A and B are identical it means that A and B
are numerically identical, i.e., these are not two separate things but one
and the same thing. The identity theorists use the term 'identity' in its
second sense. To them mental states and processes and physical brain
states and processes are literally one and the same thing and hence they
are numerically identical.

The sense of the term 'identical' can more easily be understood

with the help of the example of the morning star and the evening star.
Although the meaning of the expressions is not same, the object
referred to by these two expressions is one and the same, known as
'Venus', a planet. The same star when it is seen in the morning, it is
called 'morning star' and when it is seen in the evening, it is called the
'evening star'. Thus the morning star and the evening star are identical,
since it is the same star which is called differently at different times.
Again, there are two terms 'lightning' and 'electrical discharge'
referring to lightning and electrical discharge respectively which seem
to be identical, but the meaning of these two terms are not strictly
identical. When there is a massive electrical discharge from one cloud
to another cloud or to the earth one can say that it is 'lightning'. But it
is not the case that the word 'lightning' means a particular massive
electrical discharge. Lightning is a kind of electric discharge.

Thus the identity theorist's argument that thought, feelings,

wishes and the like are identical with physical states and processes is to
 16

be taken in the sense that both mentalistic terms and physicalistic terms
refer to one and the same thing. These two types of terms are not
synonymous in meaning and therefore the term 'identical' is not used
in the sense of their meaning being identical.

The Identity Theory of mind came into existence as a serious

philosophical thesis in the late 1950's. Although this theory was
introduced by the psychologist E. G. Boring in 1933, it took a long
duration of time to be accepted as an alternative theory in philosophy.
The pioneering works which deserve credit for the acceptance of the
philosophical version of this theory in philosophical domain were - U.
T. Place's "Is Consciousness A Brain Process?" (1956), Herbert Feigl's
'The "Mental" and the "Physical" (1958) and in 1959 J. J. C. Smart's
paper "Sensations and Brain Processes" (1959). Of these three papers,
the earliest one was U. T. Place's. Thus, he may rightly be said to be
the fore runner of this theory next to Boring. All of these papers were
depending on the same basic position although the differences of them
were remarkable in their details. But in spite of their differences the
area of agreement was sufficiently greater than that of their differences.
It was possible because of the fact that there was direct personal
connection between Place and Smart. One of the chances of their
fruitful personal relation was due to the fact that both Place and Smart
were working in the same department of the University of Adelaide in
1954. A series of discussion took place in Smart's department and he
actively participated in it. Place developed his theory based on these
discussion. In his paper "The Concept of Heed" appeared in the year
1954 Place announced his intention to defend the thesis that, "The
logical objections to the statement 'Consciousness is a process in the
 17

brain' are no greater than the logical objections which might be raised
to the statement 'lightning is a motion of electric changes."^

This announcement was made by Place before his discussion

with other members of the faculty. But Place's another writing 'Is
Consciousness a Brain Process?' was finally knocked into shape only
after a series of discussion with Smart, C. B. Martin and D. A. T.
Gasking. It is correct that when Place opens discussion on this theory
Smart was sympathetic to Place on different issues though Smart was
at that time arguing for the behaviourist theory. Like the behaviourist
he believed that mental events can be elucidated purely in terms of
hypothetical propositions about behaviour. These can also be
elucidated by the reports of the first person's experiences. These reports
are called by G. Ryle as 'avowals'. By 'avowals' Ryle means mere
pieces of behaviour. Thus to say that a person is in pain is to meant that
the person concern is doing a sophisticated sort of wince. Ryle's
motivation was not to be a physicalist but Smart saw Ryle's theory as
friendly to physicalism.

It was Smart's hope that hypotheticals of the behaviourist though

cannot be explained ordinarily but these can be ultimately explained by
neuroscience cybernetics. As the time went on Smart began to question
Place's theory on different issues. But this could not continue for long.
In 1957 in Fall term Smart was entrusted to deliver lectures in graduate
classes on Ryle and Wittgenstein at Princeton. During this lectures
Smart expressed his support and advocated the Identity Theory. He also
invited objections from different comers to this theory and his paper of
1959 is a record of objections and answers to them. The secret of
Smart's acceptance of Place's view was that he was not satisfied with

5. Quoted from "Identifying the Mincf - selected papers of U.T.PIacc (2004), edited by George Graham Elizabeth R, Valentine, p-255
 18

Ryle's treatment of inner experiences and also that he was unable to

refute Place. But this is not all. Another reason for accepting Place was
that he was encouraged and influenced by Feigl's "The Mental" and
"The Physical" (Feigl 1958, 1967).

U.T, Place may also be called a contributor to the Behaviourist

theory. But unlike other behaviourists, he restricted his theory to
intentional or representational states of mind such as belief. He paid his
respects to Ryle, Wittgenstein and Skinner who inspired him in
developing behavioural theory. He forbad them who identified
dispositions with central states, although he believed that dispositions
of behavioural sort causally depend upon the brain, and on this point he
differed from Armstrong and developed identity theory. Disagreeing
with behaviourists, Place said that mental processes just are processes
in the brain but whereas dispositional mental states are not states of the
brain. This view was given towards the end of his life. Admitting
himself to be a behaviourist, Place writes in his article 'From Mystical
Experience to Biological Consciousness: A Pilgrim's progress'. •

"One consequence of studying psychology alongside philosophy

at a time when Ryle, Austin, Grice, and Strawson were creating Oxford
ordinary language philosophy was that the acknowledged behaviourism
of Ryle and the unacknowledged behaviourism of Wittgenstein, which
I learned about from the then newly appointed Wilde Reader in Mental
Philosophy at Oxford, Brain Farrell, was to awaken an interest, also
fostered by Farrell, in the neo-behaviourism of Tolman, Hull, and
Skinner whose different formulations were then the focus of theoretical
debate within psychology, not so much in Britain as in the United
 19

States. It was through this that I became, as I remain to this day, a

behaviourist".^

Place declares himself as behaviourist, but he at the same time

believes the existence of conscious experience and the possibility of its
scientific study. Because Place believes that to deny the existence of
conscious experience is to abandon everything that he has stood for. He
extended the following reasons for considering himself a behaviourist,

(1) He subscribes to the idea that study of private experiences of the

individual is possible only through the objective records of what he
says when he is asked to narrate them. It is because of the fact that
words are anchored to what is observable publicly and for which
linguistic communication is possible.

(2) Place believes that we can describe and explain the behaviours of
others through our ordinary psychological language. But this does not
do very well in describing our own private experience. And all these
are due to the fact that words are anchored to what is publicly
observable and for which linguistic communication is possible.

(3) Place says that we can explain and describe the publicly observable
behaviour of others through ordinary language and this is the primary
function of ordinary language. But as a theoretical language it is
unsuitable for scientific psychology. Thus Place supports the attempt of
the behaviourist who extended their effort to construct an alternative to
ordinary language for scientific purposes.

6 Ibid. P-27
 20

(4) He also believes that in case of both human and animal, our ordinary
psychological language is the source of important insight which
controls behaviour. By the use of the technique of conceptual analysis,
which is developed by Wittgenstein and other ordinary language
philosophers, these insights can only be extracted.

(5) Place further maintains that an integral and vital part of the causal
mechanism in the brain is the phenomenon of conscious experience.
These conscious experience controls the interaction between the
organism and its environment by the process of transforming input into
output, stimulus into response. Thus only in the light of the distinctive
function it performs in that process of input and output transformation,
its peculiar properties can be understood.

Once it was believed that mental events are a separate class

of events which cannot be described in terms of the concepts employed
by the physical sciences. But this kind of belief is not above the
question and as such now-a-days it has no universal acceptance among
philosophers and scientists.

In his famous article "Is Consciousness A Brain Process"

(1956) Place boldly stated that unlike the materialism of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the modem Physicalism is
behaviouristic. On this view consciousness is treated either as a special
type of behaviour, or disposition to behave in a certain way.

The logical behaviourist's analysis of cognitive and

volitional concepts in terms of disposition was accepted by Place. He
emphatically stated that an analysis in terms of dispositions to behave
is fundamentally sound in case of cognitive concepts like 'knowing',
'believing', 'understanding', and 'remembering'. The same is also true
 21

in case of volitional concepts like 'wanting' and 'intending'. But he

believes that there are some sorts of mental concepts which he calls
'intractable residue of concepts' clustering around the notions of
consciousness, experience, sensation and mental imagery which he
believes speak of inner process in case of which no behaviouristic
account would suffice. Although these mental concepts cannot be
analysed in terms of dispositional verb. Place expresses his firm
conviction that ultimately a satisfactory behaviouristic account in case
of these mental concepts will be found. Place admits that there are
certain statements that refer to some events and processes that have
some sort of private or internal experience. These are really private to
the individual of whom they are attributed. He cites statements of such
cases about pains and twinge, about how things look, sound and feel, to
speak metaphorically about things dreamed of or pictured in mind's
eye. But he apprehends that one may infer that making this assumption
leads him to an inevitable dualist position. Dualists believe that over
and above the physical and physiological processes there is a separate
category of processes. This category is formed by sensation and mental
images. They also believe that mental state posseses an ontological
reality and there is a correlation between these two categories. But
Place firmly believes that one who accepts the separate category of
inner processes is not a dualist. According to him, there is no logical
ground by which one can dismiss the thesis that consciousness is a
process in the brain.

But although Place believes that consciousness is a process

in the brain, he is not in favour of the thesis that to describe our dreams,
fantasies and sensation is to talk about a process in our brain. He
extends his view that 'cognition statements'—are:'analysable unto
 22

Statements about behaviour. But he does not claim that in the same way
statements about sensation and mental images are reducible to or
analysable into statements about behaviour. It is clearly false to say that
statements about consciousness are statements about brain processes.
This falsity is shown by him by considering several facts.

(a) It is a fact that one may not know anything about brain
process or even that such thing exists but yet he can describe sensation
and mental images.

(b) It is not correct to say that statements about one's

consciousness and statements about one's brain processes are verified
in the same way. The two processes that provide the truth conditions
for such statements are distinct and provide entirely two different ways
of verification, and

(c) It is a fact that someone is in pain but there is nothing

going on in that person's brain. In that case there is nothing self
contradictory in this statement.

When Place claims that 'consciousness is a process in the

brain' he asserts that this statement is neither necessarily true nor
necessarily false. This statement, according to him, is neither self-
evident nor self-contradictory. In this connection Place cited an analogy
to convince us that his position is correct. He says that as the statement
"Lightning is a motion of electric charges" is a reasonable scientific
hypothesis so is the statement "consciousness is a process in the brain".
He cited potential explanatory power as the reason for hypothesizing
consciousness-brain state relations in terms of identity rather than mere
correlation.
 23

Place believes that there are two senses in which the word
'is' is used. These two senses are 'is' of definition and 'is' of
composition. Failing to distinguish these two senses of 'is' leads to the
conclusion that on logical grounds alone these assertion of identity
between consciousness and brain processes can be ruled out. He says,

"The distinction I have in mind here is the difference

between the function of the word 'is' in statements like, 'A Square is
an equilateral rectangle', 'Red is a colour', or 'To understand an
instruction is to be able to act appropriately under the appropriate
circumstances', and its function in statements like, 'His table is an old
packing case', 'Her hat is a bundle of straw tied together with string'
or 'A cloud is a mass of water droplets of other particles in suspension.'
"7

In spite of the difference between these two functions of the

word 'is', Place says that, one thing is common in these two types of
statements- the commonality is that "(it) makes sense to add the
qualification 'and nothing else'"^ while making the definitional as well
as compositonal sense of the the word 'is'.

Place further says that there is another type of statements in

which the word 'is' is used to express predication and this type of
statements differ from the propositions that accommodate the
qualification mentioned earlier. He says that it is nonsense to say
'"Toby is 80 years old and nothing else', 'Her hat is red and nothing
else', or 'Giraffes are tall and nothing else'".^

7. /A/rf, p-46.
8. /*/</, p-46.
9. yWrf, p-45
 24

Place maintains that the statements like "A square is an

equilateral rectangle" and the statements like "His table is an old
packing case" are strikingly different in another respect. A statement of
the former group is true by its definition and therefore, it is a necessary
statement. But a statement of the latter group, on the other hand, is
contingent, because this type of statements need to be verified by
observation. In former case there is a relationship between the meaning
of grammatical subject and grammatical predicate and as such the
subject expression and the predicate expression are applicable to the
same thing. The statement that 'Red is a colour' implies that one who
describes something as red must also be able to describe it as coloured.
Similarly, to say that 'A square is an equilateral rectangle' is to say that
if something is described as square then it must also be possible to
describe it as equilateral rectangle. But this cannot be the case with the
statement like, 'His table is an old packing case'. Because here the
meanings of the subject expression and the meaning of the predicate
expression are different and no such semantic relationship holds
between these two expressions. We apply both the expressions 'his
table' and 'an old packing case' to one and the same thing depending
on the ground that both the expressions provide an adequate
characterization of the same object. Thus, Place suspects that those who
put forward their argument for the claim that consciousness as a brain
process is logically untenable base their claim on mistaken assumption
that two statements or expressions cannot provide an adequate
characterization of the same object or state of affairs if the meanings of
them are quite unconnected. Thus the critic's argument is based on the
ground that 'a state of consciousness' and 'brain process' do not carry
the same meaning and hence both can not characterize the same object
or state of affairs.
 25

In further explanation of the two statements viz., 'This table

is an old packing case' and 'consciousness is a brain process', Place
says that there is an important difference between the two. The former
is a particular proposition because it refers to only one particular case
where as the latter is a general or universal proposition because it refers
to all states of consciousness whatever. According to Place, if it is
found that there is a world where all the tables are packing cases, in that
case, the relation between 'table' and 'packing case' would be such that
"table" would be a species of packing case and both of them in our
language would not have logically independent status. The table would
be a member of a species of packing case as a particular red thing is a
species of colour. In explaining the rule of language Place says-

"It seems to be a rule of language that whenever a given

variety of objects or states of affairs has two characteristics or set of
characteristics, one of which is unique to the variety of objects or states
of affairs in question, the expression used to refer to the characteristics
or set of characteristics that defines the variety of objects or states of
affairs in question will always entail the expression used to refer to the
other characteristics or set of characteristics. If this rule admitted of no
exception, it would follow that any. expression that is logically
independent of another expression that uniquely characterizes a variety
of objects or states of affairs must refer to a characteristic or set of
characteristics that is not normally or necessarily associated with the
object or state of affairs in question."'^

Place's suggestion is that as this rule has almost universal

application, so it is normally justifiable to argue fi*om the two
expressions which are logically independent to the states of affairs

10. Ihid. p-47.

 26

which have ontological independence. It is generally believed that this

rule will be able to explain the independent existence of entities like
consciousness and brain processes. But Place believes that there are
certain exceptional cases, though relatively small in number, where the
rule of the argument from the logical independence of two expressions
to the ontological independence does not work and the case of brain
processes and consciousness is one of them. In mentioning the
exceptional cases he says,

"These exceptions are to be found, I suggest, in those cases

where the operations that have to be performed in order to verify the
presence of the two sets of characteristics inhering in the object or state
of affairs in question can seldom if ever be performed
simultaneously".''

He further says that the case of the cloud and the mass of
droplets or other particle in suspension is a good example of such
exceptional cases. A cloud appears differently from different distances.
If it is observed from far, it looks like a large semitransparent mass and
fleeting in appearance and there is a continuous change in its shape. But
the same cloud is found to consist of a mass of tiny particles and in
continuous motion if it is observed from a close distance. Thus our
conclusion that a cloud is nothing but a mass of tiny particles is drawn
on the basis of our close observation of it. But in between a cloud and
a mass of tiny particles, there is no logical connection in our language.
If it is said that a cloud is not composed of tiny particles in suspension,
there is nothing self-contradictory. If someone assumes that a cloud
consists of a dense mass of fibrous tissue there involves no
contradiction. In mythology and fairy stories we find that cloud

11. /A/rf, p-48

 27

performs many functions. From this it is implied that there is

consistency in making the above statements about clouds. Here the
meaning of the terms 'cloud' and 'mass of tiny particles in suspension'
are not same. But in spite of their quite different meanings we do not
conclude that these two terms viz., 'cloud' and 'mass of tiny particles
in suspension' must be two things. The reason behind this conclusion,
as suggested by Place, is that there is an invariable association of the
characteristics of the objects both the terms 'cloud' and 'mass of tiny
particles in suspension' speak about. But in spite of this we never think
that to verify the two statements 'that is a cloud' and 'this is a mass of
tiny particles in suspension' observation is necessary at one and the
same time. It is only when we are enveloped by cloud, we can observe
the microstructure of it but at that time we cannot observe those
characteristics which describes cloud when observed from a distance.
Thus the same thing is called 'fog' or 'mist' when we are enveloped by
it and when observed from a distance, it is called 'cloud'.

Place holds that among the few cases of general propositions

the example of the cloud and the mass of the tiny particles in
suspensions is one which does not involve scientific technicalities
although it involves the compositional sense of 'is'. But this type of
proposition has its uses. It tries to make a connection between the two
senses of 'is', viz., ordinary everyday use and the more technical use.
The former is exemplified by 'the table is a packing case' and the latter
by 'lightning is a motion of electric charges'. Place tries to show that
there is an important difference between consciousness-brain process
case and cloud-tiny particles in suspension case. In case of the cloud
being tiny particles we establish the identity between the states of
affairs referred to by the two expressions by observation. But this
 28

situation fails to manifest clearly the crucial problem of the identity of

the states of affairs. It is claimed that the establishment of the identity
of the entities referred to by the two expressions is possible if there is a
continuous process of observation between the two sets - moving of
observer towards cloud or away of the observer from the cloud. But
such a process of continuity between two sets of observation does not
hold good in a case of brain processes and consciousness. To verify the
statements about consciousness and statements about brain processes
require a fundamentally different type of operation.

Place holds that in order to find out a parallel for this feature
it is necessary to examine other cases where an identity is asserted. By
'other cases' he refers to those things by the ordinary process of
observation whose occurrence is established. To meet this purpose he
has chosen the case of 'lightning is a motion of electric charges'. He
says that no one will be able to observe the electric charges even if he
scrutinize the lightning very closely. In his own words, " .just as
the operations for determining the nature of one's state of
consciousness is radically different from those involved in determining
the nature of one's brain processes, so the operations for determining
the occurrences of lightning are radically different from those involved
in determining the occurrence of a motion of electric charges. What is
it, therefore, that leads us to say that the two sets of observations are
observations of the same event? It cannot be merely the fact that the
two sets of observations are systematically correlated such that
whenever there is lightning there is always a motion of the electric
charges."'^

12./*(</, p-49.
 29

Place believes that there are so many cases where there is

correlation between two sets of things but from this correlation one
cannot conclude that observation of this two sets are really the
observation of the same event. In this connection he cites the example
of the movements of the tides and the stages of the moon. There is no
doubt that these two events are systematically correlated but from this
one cannot say that the records of one are the same as the records of the
other and vice versa. Here we should rather say that two independent
events or processes are causally connected.

In answering the question - when are two sets of observations

observations of the same event? Place says " in the cases
where the technical scientific observations set in the context of the
appropriate body of scientific theory provide an immediate explanation
of the observations made by the man in the street"^-'

Thus, considering the above fact, Place's conclusion

regarding lightning is that it is nothing more than a motion of electric
charges. In this connection he also shows the reason for this conclusion.
He says that it is well known to all of us that through the atmosphere a
motion of electric charges occurs and this electric charge produces a
type of visual stimulation, observing which an observer reports that it
is a flash of lightning. But in the case of records of tidal levels and
records of the moon's stages. Place holds that, there is no such direct
causal connection between an observer who measures the height of the
tide and the stages of the moon although in between the moon and the
tides, there is causal connection.

13. /Wd.p^9
 30

In explaining the Physiological Explanation of Introspection

and Phenomenological Fallacy Place says that if the above account is
taken to be correct then it leads to the conclusion that before
establishing the identity of consciousness and certain processes in the
brain it is necessary to show some other thing. His suggestion is that it
is necessary to establish that a subject's reports of introspective
observation can be accounted for in terms of his brain processes. If this
truth is established then it can be easily established that consciousness
and certain brain processes are identical. This truth may not be
understood by a physiologist as because the understanding of a
philosopher and a physiologist is very different. When a physiologist
faces the difficulty to see how consciousness and brain processes are
identical, he does not think that this assumption is self contradictory
rather considers it as an apparent impossibility. He thinks that, it is
impossible to account the report of conscious processes given by a
subject in terms of the known properties of the central nervous system.
In this connection Place quoted a version of Sir Charles Sherrington.
Place says that the above problem is posed by Sherrington in the
following way,

"The chain of events stretching from the sun's radiation

entering the eye to, on the one hand, the contraction of the pupillary
muscles, on the other hand, to the electrical disturbances in the brain-
cortex are all straightforward steps in a sequence of physical
'causation', such as, thanks to science, are intelligible. But in the
second serial chain there follows on, or attends, the stage of brain -
cortex reaction an event or set of events quite inexplicable to us which
both as to themselves and so as to the causal tie between them and what
preceded them science does not help us; a set of events seemingly
 31

incommensurable with any of the events leading up to it. The self sees'
the sun; it senses a two - dimensional disk of brightness located in the
'sky', this last a field of lesser brightness, and overhead shaped as a
rather flattered dome, coping the self and a hundred other visual things
as well. Of hint that this is within the head there is none. Vision is
saturated with this strange property called 'projection', the unargued
inference that what it sees is at a 'distance' from the seeing 'self.
Enough has been said to stress that I the sequence of events a step is
reached where a physical situation in the brain leads to a psychical,
which however contains no hint of the brain or any other bodily
part The supposition has to be, it would seem, two continuous
series of events, one physicochemical, the other psychical, and at this
interaction between them".''*

Place thinks that the physiologist and the philosopher hold

two different outlooks. A philosopher may believe that in supposing
consciousness to be a brain process there involves some self-
contradiction. The physiologist may not consider the thesis to be a case
of conceptual incoherence and take it to be an unexplainable piece of
phenomena and hence he is not likely to be impressed by such a
contention of the philosopher. Similarly, the philosopher is not likely
to be impressed by the contention of the physiologist and it is because
of this Sherrington concludes the existence of two sets of events -
physicochemical and psychical. But such a conclusion of Sherrington,
according to Place, is based on emotional appeal and it depends on a
logical mistake, although the mistake is fairly a simple one. This type
of mistake is called by Place as the "phenomenological fallacy". Place
believes that such type of mistake is very common amongst the

14 Quoted from Idenlifylng Ihe Mind, Selected Papers of U. T. Place (2004) Edited by George Graham Elizabeth R. Valentine, p-50.
 32

physiologists and psychologists and philosophers themselves in the

past were not exception from committing such mistake. Description of
a subject's experience means how things are looked at by him or how
things sound, smell, taste or feel to him. But contrary to this, it is
supposed that this description of experience of a subject is nothing but
the description of the literal properties of object and events and these
properties are of peculiar sort of internal cinema or television screen,
that in modem psychological literature these usually referred to as the
'phenomenal field'. It is here where this 'phenomenological fallacy'
occurs. In this connection Place cites an example. If it is assumed that
a subject's report of green after-image is nothing but the assertion of an
object which is literally green and which is not due to peculiarties of
his own, in such cases we assume the existence of an entity which has
no place in the physical world but our own making. Corresponding to
the subject's description of green object there is no green object in the
environment of him. Hence green afterimage is there without any green
object. When the subject reports the appearance of the green
afterimage, there is nothing found green in his brain. Moreover nothing
green emerged at the time of his reporting of green afterimage. Colour
concept cannot be applied to the brain processes as because brain
processes cannot be categorized as that sort of things.

Place believes that it is a mistaken assumption on which the

phenomenological fallacy depends. This mistaken assumption is that it
is our consciousness of object on which our ability to describe things in
our environment depends. Contraray to this assumption, whenever we
describe things we primarily describe nothing but our conscious
experience and objects and events in our environment are described
secondarily, indirectly and inferentially. It is our assumption that by
 33

their look, sound, smell, taste and feel, we recognize things in our
environment. From their phenomenal properties like the properties of
looks, sounds, smells, tastes and feels that the things produce in us we
infer their real properties. But this line of thinking is rejected by Place
and he says that the fact is just its opposite. Recognition of the real
properties of things on our environment starts by learning. It is not that
before describing the things themselves we have to learn how to
describe the look, sound, smell, taste and feel of things. Rather it is by
their look, sound, smell, taste and feel, we learn to recognize the real
properties of things of our environment. The real situation is that we
can learn how to describe our consciousness of things in our
environment only after we have learned to describe them the way we
ordinarily do.

In the mythical 'phenomenal field' there are mythical objects

in which mythical 'phenomenal properties' are supposed to inhere and
we describe our conscious experience in terms of their 'phenomenal
properties'. But Place strongly rejects this theory. He says,
" when we describe the afterimage as green, we are not saying
that there is something, the after image, that is green; we are saying that
we are having the sort of experience that we normally have when, and
that we have learned to describe as, looking at a green patch ©flight".'^

In his latter writings Place maintains that J. J. C. Smart's

thesis that sensations are processes in the brain could and should be
interpreted as a straight forward scientific hypothesis. But Smart claims
that such a comment of Place is partly right and partly wrong. Place is
partly right in the sense that the issue is between a brain process thesis

15./*/</, p-51
 34

and a heart, liver or kidney thesis, so this issue is empirical and

therefore, the decision of this issue can be obtained by the method of
experiment. He is partly wrong in the sense that the issue is between
materialism and epiphenomenalism, psychological parallelism,
interactionism and so forth, and therefore, it is a non empirical issue.
But contrary to Smart, Place argues that the view of Smart is itself
partly right and partly wrong. When Smart maintains that the issue is
between the kinds of materialism, he is right because both Smart and
Place themselves wish to defend this theory. But when Smart says that
the rival theories are epiphenomenalism, psychological parallelism,
interactionism and so forth, he is wrong because these doctrines are
non- empirical issues. This topic is argued by Place in his own paper
and holds that in order to say that a process or event that is observed in
one way is the same process or event which is observed in another set
of observations made under quite different conditions; there are certain
logical conditions which must be satisfied. In his paper (Place, 1956)
he suggested only one logical criterion which is that, " the
process or event observed in or inferred from the second set of
observations should provide us with an explanation, not of the process
or event observed in the first set of observations but of the very fact that
such observations are made." '^

Place cited an illustration of such criterion. He compares two

events in this connection. These are -

16 Ibid, p-53
 35

1. Observation of the celestial movements of the sun and the

moon are used in Astronomy to explain the movement of the tides in
Geography, and

2. The motion of electric charges is interpreted and used to

explain an event called 'lightning'. This later event though real is not a
separate physical object but it is a fact that in a stormy night we see and
hear the sort of things we call 'lightning' which acually is the motion
of electric charges.

This point is explained by Feigl by giving another example.

He says that relation between temperature and molecular movement
brings out the same point. Place and Feigl interprete the nature of
identity differently. Feigl says that it may be a case that different
observers observe the same mountain from different viewpoints but
there is the identity of concepts. Two concepts are said to be identical
if they are about the same thing. Another example of the case is
Similarly, in the case of 2^ andV64, there is the identity of concepts.
He further says that it is possible to establish the identity of things
empirically but the identity of concepts cannot be obtained empirically
only. It can also be attained deductively as in the case of 2^ and V6? .
The identity of the temperature and molecular motion is established by
empirical verification of a scientific theory.

But unlike Feigl, Place holds that the temperature, lightning

and sensation-brain-process cases are identity of things of a special
variety where an identity is asserted between a state, process or event
and the micro processes of which it is composed.

From the above analysis it appears that both Feigl and Place
differ from each other but Place suspects this apparent difference. He
 36

says that although at first sight this difference appears but there is no
fundamental difference between Feigl's position and of his own.

To prove that a process or event observed in one way is the

same process or event that observed in another set of observations
which is made under different condition, Place mentions an additional
criterion and this criterion he mentions in his article -"Materialism as a
Scientific Hypothesis". In this article he says,

"I would now want to add to this rather obvious additional

criterion that the two sets of observations must refer to the same point
in space and time, allowing for such things as the time taken by the
transmission of light and sound, distortions in the transmitting media,
the personal equation of the observer, and differences in the precision
with which location is specified in the two sets of observations".'^

After mentioning this criterion Place says that for the present
purpose it is not necessary to prove the correctness or incorrectness of
this logical criterion. The important thing here is that some logical
criterion must be there in the case of taking decision whether the same
event or two separate events are referred by two sets of correlated
observations or the events that are causally related. It is a problem no
doubt to decide what these criteria are and this problem is a logical
problem and as such it cannot ordinarily be decided by experiment.

1.2.2 View of Smart

J. J. C. Smart developed the identity theory in his paper

"Sensations and Brain Processes". In this paper he claims that his
argument takes departure from U. T. Place's argument that he put

17./AW, p p - 5 3 - 5 4 .
 37

forward in his article "Is Consciousness a Brain Process"? Smart admits

that he is lucky enough to have the opportunity to discuss Place's thesis
in different universities in the United States and Australia and tries to
answer the objections to Place's thesis although Place himself did not
consider these objections.

In this article Smart mentions the possible objections that

may come from critics against the identity theory. At the same time he
also answered these questions. Among these, the following are the
important one.

1) An illiterate man may not know anything about neurophysiology

but he can perfectly talk about after-image, or how things look or feel
to him or he can talk about his aches and pains. Thus, when we describe
our sensations, the things we are talking about cannot be processes in
the brain.

In reply to this objection Smart says that a contingent statement

of the form "A is identical with B" can be there and that something is
an A may be known by a person without knowing that it is also B.
Without knowing about brain processes an illiterate peasant might well
be able to talk about his sensations as without knowing anything about
electricity he can talk about lightning.

2) To say that when we have certain kind of sensation there is a

certain kind of process in our brain is only a contingent fact. But it may
be the case that in connecting the mental processes with the going on in
our hearts present physiological theories will be out of date as we find
in the case of ancient theory, although there is highest degree of
impossibility of such an event. Thus to report a sensation is not a report
of brain process.
 38

In reply Smart says that this objection means that having an after-
image does not mean that someone has such and such brain process.
But the fact is that what one reports is brain process. Two propositions
- 'I see lightning' and 'I see an electric discharge' - do not mean the
same thing. But there is a logical possibility that one day the electrical
discharge account of lightning might be given up. But this logical
possibility, according to Smart, is highly unlikely. Moreover, the
meaning of the 'Evening Star' and the meaning of the 'Morning Star'
do not mean the same but these two stars are one and the same thing.
Thus Smart believes that the proposition that 'the Evening Star and the
Morning Star are one and the same thing' is a contingent one.

Smart apprehends that some of the apparent strength of the

second objection a 'Fido-Fido theory of meaning according to which
the meaning of a word is an object it stands for. If it were the case that
the meaning of an expression is what the expression named then it is
obvious that there are different meanings of 'sensation' and 'brain-
process' and as such these two terms cannot name one and the same
thing.

3) The critics of the identity theory may claim that the above two
objections, if fails to prove that sensations are something over and
above brain processes, at least prove that the qualities of both
sensations and brain processes are not same. The qualities of the former
are something over and above the latter. We call 'morning Star' and
also call 'Evening Star' and identify them. We call the morning star
'Morning Star' because it has the property of being seen in the morning.
Similarly, the Evening star is called 'evening star' because it is seen in
the evening. Again, apart from thes properties some other properties
 39

might be there, such as, 'that of being yellow flash' and these are
logically distinct from the former.

In reply to the above possible objection Smart says that it is the

strongest one among others with which he has to deal. In this
connection he refers property of 'being a yellow flash' and says that
this property might lay outside the physicalist frame work and this
laying is inevitable. In this connection his suggestion is like this, "when
a person says 'I see a yellow-orange after-image,' he is saying like this
'there is something going on which is like what is going on when I have
my eyes open, am awake, and there is an orange illuminated in good
light in front of me, that is, when I really see an orange"'^

Smart believes that to answer the question No.3 is not as easy as

it seems to be. The reply of this question depends on the ability to report
the likeness of two things but not their respects in which these are alike.
By saying this he is also in doubt whether this answer is correct or not
and that is why he deals this problem in his subsequent works.

4) The brain-process occurs in physical space but the after-image is

not and therefore it is not correct to say that after-image is brain-
process.

Smart says that his argument is not like that the after-image is a
brain-process rather experience of having an after-image is a brain-
process. Our introspective report is about the experience. Again,
objection may come from the critic that an after-image is yellow-
orange but there is nothing yellow-orange in the brain even if a
surgeon looks into it. Smart says that here the description is about the

l». Ibid, P-2K.

 40

experience of seeing yellow-orange and this experience itself is not a

yellow-orange something.

5) There is an obvious sense to say that a molecular movement in the

brain is swift or slow, straight or circular but the experience of seeing
something yellow having such characterstics makes no sense.

Smart's reply is that he never intended that experiences could be

swift or slow, straight or circular. He never claims that the meaning of
the term 'experience' and 'brain-process' are same or even these two
terms have the same logic. In this connection he says,

"All that I am saying is that 'experience' and 'brain-process' may

in fact refer to the same thing, and if so we may easily adopt a
convention (which is not a change in our present rules for the use of
experience words but an addition to them) whereby it would make
sense to talk of an experience in terms appropriate to physical
processes."'^

6) Another possible objection Smart anticipates is that sensations of

someone are purely private to him. These are personal to himself. No
other person have it. He is epistemically in a priviledged position
access it. But such privilege cannot be ascribed in the case of brain
processes which are rather publicly observable. It is not wrong on the
part of someone who says that he sees a yellowish- orange after image.
There is nothing verbal mistake made in that case. But the same is
wrong when says about brain process. It might be the case that the
same brain process is observed by two or more people but the inner

19. Ibid, p-249.

 41

experience of one cannot be reported by any one except the

experiencer.

Smart says that the logic of the language of introspective reports

and the logic of the language of the reports for the material processes
are not the same. He admits that the brain process theory has not
improved adequately and widely accepted yet and that is why we have
no criteria in our hands to say that Smith has an experience of such-
and-such sort. Untill we get such a fully developed theory we will have
to depend on Smith's introspective reports to understand his
experience. Thus the rule of language we have adopted normally is
the reports of Smith about his experiences.

7) Someone can imagine that he himself is turned into stone and yet he
possesses the capacity to imagine, have the feeling of pains, aches and
other things.

Smart's reply is that there cannot be any objection to imagine

that the electrical theory of lightning is false and it is some sort of
purely optical phenomenon. Or it can be imagined that lightning is not
an electrical discharge. Similarly, there is no objection to imagine that
the Evening Star and the Morning Star are not one and the same object.
But actually lightning is an electrical discharge and the Morning Star
and the Evening Star are one and the same object. Critics' objection
shows that the meaning of the term 'experience' and the meaning of
the term 'brain process' are not same. Their objection does not reveal
that an experience is, in fact, not a brain process.

Smart claims that his own paper (1959) successfully

answered the objections of Place's paper and presents his thesis in a
more nearly unobjectionable form. He also claims that this paper is
 42

meant to supplement the thesis 'The 'Mental' is the 'Physical"

propounded by Feigl. Feigl's paper, according to Smart, argues for
much the same thesis as propounded by Place.

Smart explains a report of a visual experience in the

following way, if a person reports that he has an after-image which is
roundish, blurry-edge in shape, yellowish towards its edge and towards
its centre it is orange. In this reporting the person is reporting nothing.
In that case the person is actually expressing some sort of temptation
and that temptation is to say that there is on the wall a roundish yellow
orange patch. Similarly, when someone reports a pain, he is not really
reporting anything; he is doing a sophisticated sort of wince. Smart
admits that instead of a pain he prefers to discuss an after image,
because pain brings the notion of 'distress' which is irrelevant to this
purpose. According to him, to say that 'a person is in pain' is to say that
he is in certain agitation condition as because the term 'pain' entails
'distress'. But to say that 'I am in pain' is partly to report and that report
is physical something and as such it is irreducible. Thus regarding after
- image. Smart wishes to resist the suggestion that it is a report of
something physical and as such irreducible.

Smart believes that science is developing day by day and this

development will help us to see the organisms as physico-chemical
mechanisms. He also claims that day will come when, with the
mechanistic terms, the behaviour of man himself will be explicable. It
is pertinant to note that in scientific explanation we find the talk about
complex arrangements of physical constituents in the world and
nothing else. But Smart says that even if all is explicable in terms of
physical arrangement, consciousness cannot be so explicable.
According to him, to describe fijlly the happenings of events that are
 43

going on in a man, the physical processes in his tissue, glands nervous

system and so forth are not sufficient. In that case his states of
consciousness: his visual, auditory and tactual sensations, his aches
and pains are also necessary. It is not correct to say that these are
correlated with the brain processes because nothing can be correlated
with itself. Thus to say that these are correlated with the brain processes
implies that these are something over and above the brain processes. It
is possible to correlate footprints with burglar's but Bill Sikes the
burglar cannot be correlated with Bill Sikes the burglar. Thus Smart's
conclusion is that sensation and states of consciousness are one kind of
things which are not included in physicalist picture. But its exclusion
does not demand for existence of things other than physical things. He
believes that everything except the occurrence of sensations should be
explicable in terms of physics. Following Feigl, Smart says that such
sensations would be 'nomological danglers'.

Smart firmly believes that sensations are brain processes. But he

does not accept the thesis that the meaning of 'after-image' or 'ache'
and 'brain process of sort x' are same. He rather believes that 'after -
image' or 'ache' is a report of a process and that process happens to be
a brain process. He stated that this does not mean sensation statements
are translatable into statements about brain processes. It is also not a
claim that the logic of sensation statement and brain processes
statements are one and the same thing. Nevertheless, the report of
sensation statement is in fact a report about a brain process. Over and
above brain processes, there is nothing called sensations. Smart
compares sensations and brain processes with that of nation and its
citizens. We find that there is no existence of nation without its citizens
although the logic of nation statements and the logic of citizen
 44

Statements are very different. As the nation statement cannot be

translated into citizen statement, so the sensation statement cannot be
translated into brain processes statement. But here Smart does not want
to assert that the relation of sensation statement to brain process and the
relation of nation statement to citizen statement are very alike. Here he
draws one's attention to the truth that there is ontological commitments
to citizens only as it is the case with the brain processses.

It is to be noted here that Smart, at least in the beginning,

followed Place in applying the Identity Theory only to those mental
concepts considered resistant to behaviourist treatment, notably
sensations. He attempts to identify sensations with states of the central
nervous system and that is why this limited version of Mind - Brain
Type Identity also became known as "Central - State Materialism".
This analysis of sensation - reports was the main concern of Smart. He
analysed this sensation report into as 'topic - neutral' language. His
topic neutral language can be roughly stated like this 'there is
something going on which is like what is going on when my are eyes
open, am awake, and there is something green illuminated in front of
me.' Thus for adopting the thesis that sensations are processes in the
brain Smart has given explanation and by this explanation he was
diverged from Place. Smart points out that to decide between
materialism and epiphenomenalism, there is no conceivable
experiment. He maintains that the statement 'sensations are brain
processes' is not a straight out a statement of a scientific hypothesis. It
should be adopted on other grounds. In support of this claim he cited
Occam's razor. He also maintains that even if the brain process theory
and dualism are equally consistent with the facts, the former has an
edge in virtue of its simplicity and explanatory utility.
 45

Since Smart cited Occam's razor in support of his claim, it is

necessary to have an explanation of this principle. Occam's razor is a
principle attributed to the 14^*^ century English logician and Franciscan
friar, William Ockham. This principle states that in explaining any
phenomena we should make as few assumptions as possible and at the
same time we should eliminate those that make no difference in the
observable predictions of the explanatory hypothesis or theory. In
Latin, the principle is often expressed as the lex parsimoniac meaning
'law of parsimony', or iaw of economy' or 'law of succinctness'. This
roughly means that entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity.
An alternative version of this saying is that plurality should not be
posited without necessity.

In his article "Sensations and Brain Processes" Smart

claimed Occam's razor as the basis for his preference of the mind-brain
identity theory over the dualistic theory of mind and body. It is the
claim of dualists that there are two kinds of substances that we find in
the universe. These are: physical and mental or non physical. In contrast
to this dualistic theory, the identity theorists claim that everything is
physical, including consciousness.

Occam's razor also plays an important role in Feigl's version

of Mind-Brain Identity Theory. In addition to the normal physical laws
of cause and effect that we find in the naturalistic picture, it is supposed
that there are psycho-physical laws positing mental effects and for any
observable behaviour these by themselves do not function as causes.
Feigl criticizes this supposition. According to Feigl, the dualist's
supposed mental- physical causal relations unnecessarily imply mental
states as 'nomological danglers'. They would dangle from the
nomological net of physical science and should strike one as
 46

implausible excrescences on the fair face of science. Feigl holds that in

a respectable ontology such nomological danglers have no place. Thus
according to him, epiphenomenalism, being a species of dualism,
should be rejected in favour of an alternative and this alternative should
be a monistic theory of mind-body relations. It is the suggestion of Feigl
that the empirically ascertainable correlations between phenomenal
experiences, which he calls "raw of feels", and neurophysiological
processes are to be interpreted in terms of contingent identity. He also
says that the terms we use to identify them though have different
senses; their referents are one and the same - namely, the immediately
experienced qualities themselves.

1.2.3 View of Feigl

It is to be mentioned here that the identity theory that Feigl

developed was out of his 1958 paper and his version of the theory was
quite independent of Place and Smart. In that paper he argued that what
is designated by the mentalistic language is identical with what is
described by the behaviouristic language. These designate and
descripta of the mentalistic language and behaviouristic language
respectively, are also identical with the designate of the neuro-
physiological language. But subsequently in his 1958 paper Feigl
concentrates his discussion within the mentalistic language dropping
the descripta of the behaviouristic language into the background. He
attempted to find out the descripta of the concept mental within
mentalistic language which could reasonably be supposed to be
identical with certain events or processes in the brain. He argued that in
the present day psychology the word 'mental' covers the
 47

unconsciousness events and processes in addition to the events and

processes of direct experience i.e., the raw feels. It also covers the
intentional acts of perception, introspective awareness, expectation,
thought, belief, doubt, desire volition, resolution etc. but Feigl claims
that intentionality belongs to the logical category rather than
psychological category and as such this term is to be analysed in terms
of pure semantics. To him, any attempt to identify this aspect of mind
with that of neurophysiological language is to commit a category
mistake. Thus considering the above, Feigl concludes that the identity
thesis which he intends to clarify and defend is that the states of direct
experience of conscious human being and the states of those which we
confidently ascribe to some of the higher animals are identical with
certain aspects of the neural processes in those organisms.

In his article 'The "Mental" and the "Physical"' (1958) Feigl

explains the Identity Theory of mind-body relation. He says,
" By 'physical' I mean the type of concepts and laws
which suffice in principle for the explanation and prediction of
inorganic processes."^^

But with the inorganic processes he also added biological

phenomena under the category of 'physical'. Following the
terminology used by Meehl and Sellars he uses 'physicah' to designate
these phenomena. In contrast to this physicah, mental states are
designated by "physical]". The concept of physical], according to him,
could be introduced on the basis of inter-subjective observation
language of common life. In this connection he compares the mental
events with that of magnetic. Just as the concept of magnetic field can
be introduced with the help of postulates and correspondence rules

l7./A/d, p-230
 48

although it denotes nothing directly observable, so, it is conceivable

that by postulates and correspondence rules the concept of vital forces,
entelechies, diatheses and mental events might be given their respective
meanings. Moreover, in answering the question whether in the
explanation and prediction of the behaviour of human or sub human
organisms such concepts are really needed and whether they will do the
expected job, he says that his personal views regarding this question is
that physical2 laws will prove sufficient. This view, according to him,
is admittedly tentative and based on the progress and partial success of
physicalistic micro explanation.

Feigl says that purely subjective factors or data as a basis for

prediction or explanation are also radically opposed by the scientists.
He writes,

"This would indeed be scientifically meaningless, if not

even statistical relations of subjective states to antecedent or
consequent inter- subjective observables could be assumed."^'

Some interactionists intend in the radical sense that

subjective states are purely subjective. But Feigl says that the
interactionist view is not correct, that is, subjective states are not purely
subjective or private. In this connection he refers the interpretation of
the "emergent" raw feels by Mechisss and Sellars who hold that these
are subjective. Feigl says that their views are correct only on the ground
that they can be the objects of direct introspective verification. But
since these can also be assumed by scientists, although they do not have
the same sort of raw feels of their own direct experience, these are also
inter-subjective.

21. ;*/</, p-230.

 49

Feigl holds that throughout the ages the problem of

'subjective' and 'objective' has been the source of endless badly
confused controversies. But in this distinction something significant
and worth-preserving is there. In this connection he cited an example
of 'twinge pain' that has been experienced by a person A. This pain
experience of A is undoubtedly 'subjective' or 'private' to him which
cannot be directly experienced by others. Nevertheless, another person
B, though does not have A's pain, may infer analogically A's pain only
by observing the behaviour of A. Toothache of a patient cannot be
experienced by a dentist. Yet the dentist can know the toothache of the
patient for similar reasons. Feigl says,

"I conclude then that it makes perfectly good sense to speak

of the subjectivity or privacy of immediate experience. Numerically
different but qualitatively identical (indistinguishable) experiences may
be had by two or more persons, the experiential events being' private'
to each of the distinct persons."^^

In order to complete the analysis of the meanings of

'physical', Feigl, as mentioned earlier, distinguished physical into two
types- physical} and physical2. He clearly stated that all terms whose
specification of meaning essentially involves logical connections with
the inter-subjective observation language as well as the terms of this
observation language itself is meant by him as 'physical]' terms. He
cites the theoretical concepts in physics, psychology, biology and all
other social sciences as examples of the physical] concept.

Again, the kind of theoretical concepts which are sufficient

for the explanation of the observation statements regarding the

22. Ihul. p-231.

 50

inorganic domain of nature is meant by him as 'physical'. He further

believes that if the above classification is found to be correct, there will
be equal scope for both the terms 'physical' and 'physical'. But the
scope of both the terms will be different on the condition that if there is
genuine emergence, i.e., logical underivability, in the domain of
organic, mental and/or social phenomena. If this happens, then in that
case the scope of 'physical' terms is clearly narrower than that of
'physical 1'theoretical terms.

Feigl further says that there will be no basic distinctions

between the theoretical terms of physical] and physical languages if it
is found that above the level of lifeless phenomena there is no genuine
emergence in the logical sense. By saying this he cites the example that
as the theoretical terms of chemistry are now-a-days explicitly
definable on the basis of the theoretical terms of the physical language,
so on the basis of the theoretical concepts of physics, the theoretical
terms of biology and psychology could be explicitly definable.

Thus, according to Feigl, the central question of the mind-

body relation is: "Are the concepts of introspective psychology-
relating to phenomenal data or phenomenal fields- definable on the
basis of physical] theoretical terms, and if so, are they also definable on
the basis of 'physical (theoretical) terms?"^^

Out of these two questions the first one, according to him,

is a matter for philosophical analysis and the second one is undecided
as because it is at the present level under scientific research. But he
boldly, but taking risk guesses that the scientific research progress will
decide it affirmatively in future days.

23. //>;</, p- 234

 51

1.2.4 View of Armstrong

D. Armstrong, another materialist philosopher, also

contributed to the Identity theory of mind. In his preface to the book A
Materialist Theory of Mind he admitted that almost from the beginning
there were philosophers who were materialists about mind. But this
materialist analysis of mind could not attract the philosophers of
twentieth century till the appearance of U. T. Place, H. Feigl and J. J.
C. Smart. Armstrong acknowledges Smart's influence on his thought
with regard to the analysis of mind- body relation. He says,
"Professor J. J. C. Smart converted me to the view, defended
in this book, that mental states are nothing but physical states of the
brain. He in his turn has acknowledged the influence of U. T.
Place My intellectual debt to them remains profound,"^"*

Armstrong categorically and enthusiastically announced that

he was and is happy to say that mental states and the states of the brain
are identical, and this identity is a contingent identity. The Identity
theory of mind is regarded by many philosophers as really paradoxical.
They say that this theory of mind is very extraordinary. In this
connection we may refer the view of A. G. N. Flew who, in 1962 writes:
"In the face of the powerful and resolute advocacy now offered this
admittedly paradoxical view can no longer be dismissed in such short
order."^^

Armstrong too admits that when he first heard this theory he

also found it paradoxical. He also thinks that not only he himself but

24. D. M. Armstrong (2002), A Materialisi Theory ofihe Mind, p-XI

25 Philosophical Review, vol. LXXI, 1962, p-403.
 52

many other philosophers shared the attitude of Flew. But he is sure that
this attitude is confined exclusively to philosophers only. Like the first
year university students they usually thought that it is not possible to
regard mind as the brain and that is why they regard it as self evident to
hold that the Central - state theory is false. But Armstrong holds that
such a view of philosophers is not shared by others and it is evident that
because of the potentiality, this theory enjoys wide support outside
philosophy.

Armstrong holds that whenever we speak of 'brains', 'brain-

storm', 'brain-washing', 'brain-child', racking one's brains' we
actually speak about the mind. And if we ask the people who have
general education and without having any philosophical training that
whether mind is brain or is it separate from brain, many of them will
answer that mind is brain. Some will in return, ask that if mind is not
brain then what it is. Armstrong believes that there are persons who
deny this fact and their denial is based on theological reasons. On the
contrary, there are scientists and particularly the psychologists, who do
not regard the Central-state theory paradoxical. Among them Hebb
(1958) is a representative of this group. In his famous book 'Text Book
of Psychology' he writes;

"There are two theories of mind, speaking very generally.

One is animistic, a theory that the body is inhabited by an entity - the
mind or soul - that is quite different from it, having nothing in common
with bodily processes. The second theory is physiological or
mechanistic; it assumes that mind is bodily process, an activity of the
brain. Modem psychology works with this latter theory only. Both are
intellectually respectable (that is, each has support from highly
 53

intelligent people, including scientists), and there is certainly no

decisive means available of proving one to be right, the other wrong."^^

Armstrong believes that to maintain the unity of mind and

body, the identity theory explains it in a very simple way. According to
him. Brain is the pilot in the vessel as because physically it resides
inside the body. To say that mind is 'in' the body and to say that mental
processes are 'inner processes' are completely natural. He used the
word 'in' primarily in spatial sense. But this sense of use of the 'in'
must be denied by the dualist according to whom mind is a mystery and
thus in any gross material sense mind is not in the body.

Armstrong says that as the attribute and the behaviourist

theories can provide a simple principle of numerical difference for
minds, such as, difference of place, so he expects that this can be
provided by the Central-state materialism. He also believes that the
interaction of mind and body can be explained by this theory in a very
simple way. This theory derives the conclusion that mind and body
interact on the ground that brain and body interact. According to
Armstrong, from the implication of the Central-state theory we are
allowed to say that it is not that we have a mind or that we do not have
it, there is no sharp break because in a gradual way mind comes into
being. This conclusion is drawn by Armstrong on the ground that there
is evolution of the species and development of the individual and, in
this process, in a gradual way brain comes into being. Thus Armstrong
believes that the especial advantage of this theory and also of
behaviourism is that they represented the world-picture in a simple
way.

26 D. O. Hcbb. A Text Book of Psychology, p-3.

 54

But Armstrong also points out that there is a basic difference

between the Central-state theory and behaviourism. The Central-state
theory admits the existence of inner state where behaviourism denies.
The Central-state theory holds that these inner mental states are
physical states of the brain.

We have already mentioned that Armstrong developed the

Identity theory originally advocated by Place, Feigl and Smart. But
before his positive contribution to the theory, he delineated some of the
serious objections of this theory that might be raised by the critics and
subsequently he tried to meet these objections.

In the first place he considered the argument that any theory

of mind to be satisfactory must have to admit the logical possibility of
disembodied existence of mind. If the Central-state theory argued that
mind is the brain then this theory does not admit the disembodied
existence of mind as because there is no brain without body.

Secondly, an independent existence of brain states and

processes could be conceived as these seem to be things. Even their
existence could be conceived as, (e.g., patterns of electrical discharge
in space) without requiring the existence of any brain. But it is not clear
how the Central-state theory can account the mental states because
these have no independent existence.

Thirdly, regarding intentionality, i.e., the power of the

mental states to refer to things other than themselves is not explainable
in the account given by a Central-state theory. Armstrong believes that
this is not a problem only with Central-state theory, but no theory prior
to it is able to give us a satisfactory solution on this problem.
 55

Fourthly, it is found in the theory of behaviourism that in the

some way or other behaviour or disposition to behave does enter into
the concept of mind. But what the views of central-state theory are with
regard to this mental feature or how this theory does justice in regard to
mental feature of behaviour is not clear.

The above mentioned problems were raised by Armstrong in

his book A Materialist Theory of the Mind. But he also mentions some
other drawbacks of the theory and their remedies. He claims that the
difficulties of the central-state theory mentioned above will become
pale in front of the present problem that he will raise as because this is
a more powerful line of argument. He considers an argument that could
be regarded as conclusive against the claim that mind is the brain.
Consider the question whether the statement 'the mind is the brain' is a
logically necessary truth or this statement is simply contingently true.
Whether the defender of this theory desires to assimilate the statement
with other statements like 'An oculist is an eye-doctor' or '7+5 is 12'
on the one side and on the other side they try to assimilate the statement
with 'The morning star is the evening star' or 'The gene is the DNA
molecule'. Armstrong holds that it is not so easy to answer the above
question as because it is a dilemma. To him, the statement 'The mind
is the brain' is certainly not a logically necessary truth. In this
connection he refers Aristotle who delineated brain as an organ which
keeps the body cool and nothing more. And in this description of brain,
Aristotle certainly cannot be blamed of denying a necessary truth,
mistake although he committed, it was an empirical mistake.
Armstrong suggestion is that among the contingent statements of
identity we must have to find out a model if 'mind is the brain' is a true
statement. The statement that 'the mind is the brain' must be compared
 56

with some other contingent assertion of identity like "The morning star
is the evening star' or 'The gene is the DNA molecule'.

Armstrong claims that if it is admitted that the statement

'The mind is the brain', then logically independent explanations of the
meaning of the two constituting words 'mind' and 'brain' must be
possible. In this connection he refers to the example of a contingent
statement that 'the morning star is the evening star'. Here the meaning
of the two phrases -'the morning star' and 'the evening star' -can be
explained like this way - a very bright star that appears and can be seen
on certain mornings of a year in the sky is called 'the morning star'.
Similarly, a very bright star that appears and seen on certain evenings
of a year in the sky is called 'the evening star'. Here the meanings of
the above mentioned two phrases can be given by logically independent
explanations. On the same line of argument Armstrong mentions
another statement that "The gene is the DNA molecule" and he claims
this statement to be a contingent one. Here the meaning of the word
'gene' and the word' DNA molecule' can be explained in the way that
- gene is a principle that resides within us and because of which
hereditary characteristics, like colour of the eye, are transmitted from
one generation to another. The phrase 'the DNA molecule' can be
meaningfully explained by saying that a certain type of molecule
constituted by very complex chemicals and the nucleus of the cell is
formed by this. Thus here also the meanings of the two phrases 'gene'
and 'DNA molecule' can be given by logically independent
explanations.

Thus Armstrong's conclusion is that to be meaningful to say

that 'The mind is the brain' is to say that the meanings of both the words
'mind' and 'brain' can be explained in these ways. He is sure that in
 57

that case the word 'brain' will not create any trouble. But the problem
is with the word 'mind'. In a quasi-ostensive way it is possible to
explain the meaning of the term 'brain'. But in the case of 'mind' to
attempt to give a verbal explanation or ostensive definition of the
meaning of the word is impossible. In that case we must depart from a
physicalist view point. This problem is a great one that the central-state
theory is facing.

Armstrong says that in virtue of certain physical

characteristics of an object we call it brain and it is found inside the
skull of the people as a sort of certain physical object. But if we treat
this physical object also as mind we must have to add some further
characteristics to it by virtue of which it is so-called. Because, the
meaning of the word 'brain' and the word 'mind' are not same. But the
question remains as to what this further characteristics are that are not
found in the brain.

The above mentioned problem is stated by Armstrong in

another way. According to him, it is the view of the central-state
materialism that to be aware of our mental state is to be aware of mere
physical states of the brain. But it is certain that we are not aware of the
mental states as the states of the brain. These mental states, according
to Armstrong, are of a quite peculiar sort - these are mental.

One of the physicalists, Paul Feyerabend, was daunted by

this problem. His suggestion on this issue is that the world-view that is
recognized by the materialist does not allow him to state any statement
that may assert or imply the existence of mind. Thus talking about mind
by a true Physicalism is an intellectual loss but it should talk simply
about the operation of the central nervous system.
 58

In order to have an explanation of the concept of mind

Armstrong refers to the psychological way of thinking about man. In
picturing man psychologist holds that man is an object upon which
certain physical stimuli continually act and certain behaviour are
elicited from him because of these stimuli. Thus there is a causal chain
between the stimulus and response and mind falls in between this causal
chain to mediate our response to stimuli. But central-state theory says
that it is nothing but physical processes in the central nervous system
that falls between the stimulus and response. This theory even does not
believe that mind is an epiphenomenon of stimulus and response.

Thus, according to Armstrong, solving of the problem of

'mind' is within our hand if we think of the psychologist's picture
outlined above. From the psychological point of view a particular
mental process is the effect of certain stimuli and also cause of certain
responses and both of these processes are within man. The concept of
mental state is that which is brought about by certain stimuli and which
in turn brings about certain responses in a man. Armstrong points out
that it is science to discover the exact nature of mind or mental states.
He also agrees to the modem science the supposition that the central
nervous system or more crudely and inaccurately, but more simply, the
brain performs the task of mediator between stimulus and responses.

So far we have explored Armstrong's analysis of the issue of

mind and brain. After explaining his own view he considers the view
of Place and Smart which are called the classical exposition of central-
state materialism. Armstrong points out that both of these thinkers
consider only the side of stimulus, but not response. In this connection
he quotes Smart (1959), "When a person says, 'I see a yellowish-
orange after-image', he is saying something like that: 'There is
 59

something going on which is like what is going on when I have my eyes

open, am awake, and there is an orange illuminated in good light in
front of me, that is, when I really see an orange'."^''

Armstrong believes that having an orange after-image is

explicated by Smart in terms of stimuli alone. Here in a suitable
condition an orange acts upon a person. He opines that similar line is
taken by Place also. Contrary to the view of both Place and Smart,
Armstrong desires to defend a central-state account of all the mental
concepts. According to him, it is our natural tendency to distinguish
between thought or belief and the expression of thought or belief in
words or action, between emotion and the expression of emotion in
action, and also between the intention or aim and its expression in
action. When something is squeezed out, we literally say that
'something is expressed' as we find that from olives, oil is expressed.
If the same is applied to the mind, the picture of the inner state is that it
yieldes or that it brings about out behaviour. It is sure that if this picture
is to be rejected, there must be some strong reason behind it. There is
hardly any reason that srong to reject that picture.

Explaining introspection Armstrong says that it helps us

being aware of sense- impressions, sensations and mental images.
These are regarded by him as most obtrusive sort of inner items. But it
is true that sometimes we do not have thoughts and intentions. In that
case they may be imagery without accompanying sensations. In
analysing the position of Place and Smart in this regard Armstrong
says, "I think, indeed, that Place's and Smart's position is a mere hang-

27 Quoted from A Materialist Theory of the Mind (2002) by- D M . ArmsUong, p-79.
 60

over from the Sensationalism of the British Empiricists which attempts

to reduce all actual mental items to impressions, images and
sensations."^^

Armstrong holds that although both Place and Smart did not
give an account of all mental concepts but subsequently Smart has
changed his views and accepts all mental concepts in Central-State
account. Armstrong believes that if someone admits inner mental states
he will have to give all the mental concepts in a central account and it
is actually a theoretical economy. Armstrong says that the original
ground chosen by Place and Smart on perception is inadequate as they
explain it in terms of the characteristic effects of certain stimuli. This
point is regarded by Armstrong as partial truth. A full truth about
perception, according to him, is that a person can do certain things. In
that case a person can systematically discriminate between certain
classes of objects in his behaviour. A person's lacking in perceptual
powers is picked up by certain inefficiency in his conduct. So,
according to Armstrong, both stimuli and responses are equally
important in perception.

After considering the views of Place and Smart Armstrong

has given his own view on the concept of mental state. He says,

"The concept of mental state is primarily the concept of a

state of the person aptfor bringing about a certain sort of behaviour ."^^

Armstrong does not regard that mind is behaviour but he

points out that mind is the cause of behaviour. This does not make him
a patron of behaviourism. He denies himself to be a proponent of

28 /Wd,p-8I.
29. Ibid: p- 82.
 61

behaviourism as he forbids us to identify mind with behaviour. He

identifies mind with the inner principle of behaviour.

Armstrong holds that for the sake of argument if we accept

the view that to talk about mental state is to talk about inner states of
the person apt for bringing about certain sort of behaviour then obvious
questions come up about the nature of these inner states and what these
inner causes are. Armstrong says that to answer this question is not an
easy task and no logical analysis can help us in this regard. In his view
only a high-level scientific speculation can solve this problem. But yet
he puts forward different accounts of the mind that have been advanced
through the ages.

According to Armstrong, primitive view about the mind or

spirit is that it is breath which makes a difference between a living man
and a corpse. While making difference between the two, this theory
makes difference between man and other sorts of things. Man differs
from other living things in essential respects. A living man's behaviour
is extremely different from other things, but the difference between
corpse and other material object is little one. Moreover, the most
essential features which make a living man different from a corpse is
his breath. This breath or air is the spirit or mind which is responsible
for inner principle of man's unique behaviour.

Other suggestions about the nature of the mind are that it is

a flame in the body or it may be said that a collection of atoms which
are specially smooth, mobile and scattered throughout the members of
the body. Again, mind is thought of as a spiritual substance, or regarded
as a set of special properties of the body. These properties cannot be
reduced to the physico- chemical properties of matter. The irreducible
 62

properties are supposed by the Central-state Materialism as a physico-

chemical working of the central nervous system.

Armstrong says that many features of the statement 'The

mind is the brain' can be understood by a very good model provided by
the statement 'The gene is the DNA molecule'. The concept of the
'gene' was introduced by Brian Medlin to Biology. Mandel holds that
this gene is responsible for producing certain characteristics in animals
or persons. In explaining the nature of gene, Armstrong holds that,
different sort of answers are possible. One of them is that the gene
might have been an immaterial principle. Moreover, genes are
responsible for the colour of our eyes. Biologist's conclusion regarding
gene is that, for the production of heredity characteristics it plays a vital
role and this conclusion they have drawn from experiment on the
substance that is found at the centre of cells: deoxyribo-nucleic acid.
This identification of the gene and the DNA is sufficiently certain
although it is impossible on the part of anybody to observe directly nor
one could ever hope to observe in practice the causal chain from the
gene to the colouring of the eyes. From this observation Armstrong's
assertion regarding central-state theory is that, "....once it is 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 gene
with the DNA molecule."^"

With this conclusion Armstrong declares that his

preliminary sketch of the central-state is complete with this version.

30. Ihid. p-90

 63

Thus the Central-state materiaHsm of Armstrong identifies

beliefs and desires with states of the brain and in this regard Smart
agreed with him. But Place does not agree with this view. Place is rather
against the attempts to extend identity theory to dispositional states like
beliefs and desires. His argument was that we have no privileged access
to our beliefs and desires.

Place firmly believes that it is fundamentally sound to

analyse the cognitive concepts like 'knowing', 'believing',
'understanding', 'remembering' in terms of disposition to behave. The
same also true in case of volitional concepts, like 'wanting' and
'intending'. He further says that in the case of these dispositional
mental states it is necessary to give a different account of the mind-
brain relation. This account, according to him, is different from that of
mental processes which he refers by the term 'consciousnesses'. By the
term 'mental process' Place means the process in the brain and nothing
more. But the dispositional mental states are not recognized by him as
states of the brain. Dispositional state is causally dependent on the
structure of the entity which bears this disposition, but in no way it is
identical with the structure of the entity. Again, disposition has no
existence apart from its structural underpinnings otherwise it will
become a peculiar entity.

With regard to the notion of mental propensities, such as,

believing a certain proposition to be true, or wanting something to come
about, or intending to do something, there are arguments that these
belong to a different category apart from mental capacities. Because in
those cases none but the individual himself has privileged access to his
own dispositional mental states, in this connection Place says, "But this
is only because in these cases stating what you believe, asking for what
 64

you want, and stating your intentions are in themselves manifestations

of the dispositions in which beUeving, wanting and intending consist"-"

Like Place, Armstrong also rejects the argument that we

have privileged access to our beliefs and desires. According to
Armstrong, there are persons who may admit that it cannot be logically
guaranteed that introspective awareness is free from mistakes but at the
same time maintain that to our own current irmer states we have a
logically privileged access. But this view is denied by Armstrong.
According to him, it may be that, someone's inner states can be
understood by the person himself as because he himself is logically
ultimate authority of his own inner states, but in that case, there is every
possibility of his being mistaken. Thus Armstrong concludes,

"So it seems that, once incorrigibility is given up, logically

privileged access cannot be sustained. No doubt we have a privileged
access (at times) to our own mental states, but it is an empirically
privileged access"^^

1.2.5 View of Lewis

Lewis (1966) also puts forward his arguments in favour of

Identity theory. In explaining this theory he says that every experience
is identical with some physical states. Here by physical states he
specially mentions some neuro-chemical states. This explanation he
takes as a hypothesis and as such it is not necessarily true but true as a
matter of fact. He says that it is the working hypothesis of the
materialist that physical phenomena have purely physical explanation
and nothing else. It is his contention that those who accept this

31. Quoted from "Identifying the Mini' - selected papers of U.T.Place (2004), edited by George Graham Elizabeth R. Valentine, p-93

32 . D. M.Armstrong,{2002)y4 MalerialisI Theory of Mind, p-108.

 65

materialistic working hypothesis must accept the identity theory. There

are some friends of this theory who believe themselves to be free to
accept this theory on the ground that there is some sort of economy or
elegance in accepting this theory. But Lewis does not agree with these
friends of the theory. He rather believes that there is stronger
foundation upon which this theory rests on. While explaining this
theory he put forwards his argument thus-

"My argument is this: The definitive characteristic of any

(sort of) experience as such is its causal role, its syndrome of most
typical causes and effects. But we materialist believe that these causal
roles which belong by analytic necessity to experiences belong in fact
to certain physical states. Since those physical states possess the
definitive characteristics of experience, they must be the
experiences".-^-^

When Lewis extends his opinion in favour of identity theory

he says that this theory asserts that certain physical states are
experiences. These are also introspectible processes or activities. But in
no way these physical states are supposed to have intentional objects.
The object of experience is a physical something on condition that if
these really exist separate from experiences of them. But Lewis thinks
that these are also possibly neural or abstract constituents of veridically
surroundings or these may be something else or even nothing at all. But
he does not claim that experience of seeing red is itself a red neural
state.

According to Lewis, identity theory says that both

experience-ascription and certain neural-state-ascriptions have the

33. David Lcwis(1983), Philosophical Papers, Vol I, p-IOO.

 66

same reference. They refer neural states and these neural states are
experiences. But these ascriptions are not used in the same sense in two
cases. A state that is referred by experience-ascriptions is connected to
the latter by the causal law and this property accidentally belongs to it
while neural-state-ascription refers to a state by describing it in detail.
Thus this version of identity theory does not imply that the truth about
experiences is the truth about neural state nor vice versa. In this
connection Lewis refers to the doctrine of sense and reference and says-

"For a truth about things of any kind as such is about things

of that kind not by themselves, but together with the sense of
expressions by which they are referred to as things of that kind. So it is
pointless to exhibit various discrepancies between what is true of
experiences as such and what is true of neural states as such. We can
explain those discrepancies without denying psychophysical identity
and without admitting that it is somehow identity of a defective sort."^''

According to Lewis, experience itself and the attribute that

is predicated of somebody who have these experiences are not identical.
The former is but the latter is the attribute of being in a certain definitive
causal role is occupied by the former, whatever its state may be but the
latter occupies that causal role, whatever state it is. Thus Lewis is
confident that the above analysis is sufficient to answer the critic's
objections. Critic tries to refute the identity between experience and
neural states on the logic that the meaning of the terms of experience-
ascriptions and neural-state description are not same and that it is only
synonymous expressions whose attributes are identical and, therefore,
the attributes of experiences and neural states cannot be identical.

34./6/c/:p-10l
 67

Lewis admits that there is non-identity no doubt but this non-identity is

not between experiences and neural states.

Thus by analysing 'experience, Lewis elaborates an

argument for the identity theory. For this purpose he takes two crucial
premises that the definitive characteristic of an experience is its causal
role and secondly, that our causal role is in fact played by physical
states and processes. Thus he concludes that as the definitive
characteristic of experience is played by physical states and processes
so experience must be physical.

1.3 Type and Token Identity Theory

The chapter in which we just discussed was the Identity Theory of

mind where we explored the views of the main exponents of this theory.
In the present section we will delineate the different forms of identity
theory, such as, Type and Token identity. But before going to these
different types of this theory it is important to have a clear conception
of the term "events" which is standardly used in identity theory while
talking about mind that mental events are physical events in the brain.
Naturally an obvious question arises about the meaning of the term
'event'. Kim (2006) points out two alternative approaches and he says
that the identity theory can be understood by making the difference
between these two alternatives. Of these two views of events, one takes
events as basic concrete particulars that are available in this world.
These concrete particulars also include the material objects around us.
These concrete particulars are of different kinds and possess different
kinds of properties as we find in material things. In this sense an
explosion or the collapse of a bridge may be called events. Similarly, a
 68

swift, violent and unexpected earthquake can be called events. This

view also asserts that a particular occurrence of pain is an event because
it belongs to a category of events called pain and all the properties of
pain event are also present in this particular occurrence of pain. This
particular pain event can have other properties also if it falls under other
event kinds. If it is said that pain is dull or pounding pain or that it is
caused by a decayed tooth or that pain wakes up a person from sleep in
the middle of the night and it continues more than three hours then pain
possesses the properties of these different events. Kim claims that pain
must be brain event and the event falls under the neural event kind C-
fibre excitation. All this is true on condition that the identity theory is
correct.

In the explanation given above we find that an event is taken as

basic particular. Thus to say an assertion that a pain event, e, is a C-
fibre excitation is to say that e belongs to two different kinds of events,
such as, pain and C-fibre excitation. It means that e is a pain and at the
same time it is C-fibre excitation. There is another way in which it is
said that both the properties of pain and C-fibre excitation are present
ine.

There is another sense in which the term 'event' is used by Kim.

According to this sense, at a particular point of time when an object
exemplifies or instantiates a property, it is called event. Thus 'I am now
in pain' is an event. Similarly,' you are now in pain' is also an event.
But these two events are distinct. Kim says that two events e and/are
said to be same event on condition that they exemplify or instantiate
the same property possessed by one and the same object at the same
time.
 69

The difference between type-token identity is implicitly

contained in various mind-brain identity theses. Among many thinkers
Nagel is one who distinguishes between 'general' and 'particular'
identities in connection with mind-body problem. Charles Taylor
(1967) accepted this distinction of Nagel and says that "the failure of
(general) correlations would still allow us to look for
particular identities, holding not between, say, a yellow after-image and
a certain type of brain process in general, but between a particular
occurrence of this yellow after-image and a particular occurrence of a
brain process".

When it is said that mental things are the same as physical things
or both are distinct, a question naturally springs up: whether it is said
about concrete particulars, (e.g., individual instances of occurring in
particular subject at particular times), or about a kind to which such
concrete particulars belong.

According to token identity theory, every concrete particular that

falls under a mental kind can be identified with some physical
happenings. In this connection this theory refers the instance of 'pain'
which is not only an instance of mental state (e.g., pain) but also an
instance of physical state (say, C-fibre excitation).

Type identity theory, on the other hand, holds that mental kinds
themselves are physical kinds and in that sense token identity is weaker
than type identity. In explaining the relation between type identity and
token identity Jerry Fodor (1974) says that the former entails the latter
but not vice versa. Because if mental kinds themselves are physical
kinds, then a particular instance of mental kind will also be a particular
instance of a physical kind. But in no way the former is identical by the
 70

latter because a concrete particular that belongs to both mental kind and
a physical kind is a contingent fact. As such it cannot guarantee that
mental kinds and physical kinds are identical. Thus the type identity
theory claims that there is a contingent relation between mental states,
such as, pain and physical states (events), such as, C-fibre excitation.
Similarly, mental states (events) are theoretically reducible to physical
states (events).

It is to be mentioned here that originally the concept 'type' and

'token' are applied to words and analogically used in the identity
theory. Let us take a sentence 'love and love and love'. Here we find
only two types of words such as, 'love' and 'and'. But in another sense
there are five words. Each of these words is called a 'token word'.

Explaining the token identity Place says,

"For both 'His table is an old packing case' and 'The morning
star is the same object as the Evening star' are cases of token identity,
cases where two descriptions with different senses Just happen to apply
to one and the same particular object. Such cases are extremely
common. Indeed, any non-analytic proposition that asserts the co-
application of two conceptually unconnected predicates of the same
object is of this kind".^^

But Place asserts that the statement 'consciousness is a process

in the brain' is not a token identity. Because in that case we find two
types of things - one is consciousness and another is a certain brain
activity although the brain activity is yet not a specified type. These
two types not only just describe the thing rather we can apply the
features in two descriptions equally. But if the same feature is found

•" . Quoted from Identifying the Mind, Selected Papers of U. T. Place, p-82.
 71

absent then it leads us to withdraw the both in old cases. This kind of
identity, according to Place, is atypical case of type identity. He further
says that the typical token identity statement like "His table is an old
packing case" is a contingent and synthetic one, on condition that it is
found true and empirical verified. But a typical type identity statement
like "Water is H2O" is a necessary and analytic one as because their
denial leads to self-contradiction. It is to be mentioned here that in his
paper "Is Consciousness a Brain Process" Place did not introduce the
terms 'token' and 'type' and thereby he did not use the word "is" in the
sense of identity. In the passage of his 1956 paper he introduced the
statement "His table is an old packing case" as an example and
attempted to answer this question. But he admits that the passage which
he wrote in 1956 was not clearly expressed. But in 1997 he presented a
paper in a conference at the University of Leeds in connection with
forty years celebration of Australian Materialism in which he fulfilled
the deficiency of his 1956 paper. Since then his revised version was
incorporated in his 1956 paper that we find in the revised edition of
W.G. Lycan's Mind and Cognition (1999).

Thus the new addition which Place claims in his (1997) were that
token-identity statement is typically synthetic. But type-identity
statements are typically analytic. Moreover, token identity statements
are contingent but type-identity statements are necessarily true. Place
flirther mentions the reason for this claim. He says

"The reason for this is that in the case of predicates that are co-
existence, or where the extension of the one includes the extension of
the other, a conceptual connection develops between the two. The only
exceptions to this rule are cases where the extensional equivalence or
overlap is not a matter of common observation, where the observations
 72

on the basis of which the predicates are assigned are widely separated
in time and space".-'^

In support of the above passage Place cited the example of water

and H2O. He says that two terms 'water' and 'H2O' are co-extensive.
On observation we describe a sample as 'water' and the same thing
discovered later we describe as 'H2O'. But here these two types of
observations are widely separated. It is well established that both the
predicates for water have the same extension and that is why it is widely
known that 'water is H2O'. This statement, according to Place, is
analytic and necessary truth. A liquid thing is in fact water, and
chemical test shows that the same sample has the chemical composition
H2O. From this observation a conceptual connection is developed
between water and H2O.

Place says that in the case of consciousness and a particular

pattern of brain activity we can expect a similar outcome. Though this
is yet to be identified but we can presume it. It is by future neurological
research that a hypothesis of the existence of such a pattern of brain
activity will be confirmed or disconfirmed. Place hopes that if both the
existence and the nature of the pattern of the brain activity in which
consciousness consists of are established by the neurological research;
and if these results are reached to the people widely that, then we can
expect a development of a similar analytic and necessary connection
between the two. This probability is increasing day by day.

It is to be mentioned here that token identity theory is favoured

by philosophers, theologians and the peddlers of superstition. Type
identity theory is committed to prediction as to what future empirical

36
Ibid, pp-83-84.
 73

research will reveal. But token identity is not committed to any

prediction. It does not rest on the outcome of future psycho-
physiological research it is rather rest on an apriori argument. This view
is originally formulated by Davidson (1970).

But in spite of all these merits that we find in favoure of token

identity theory, Place favoured the type identity theory. His conclusion
regarding type-token distinction is that-

"I conclude that, apart from the dubious advantage that it is less
susceptible than is the type identity variety to empirical
disconfirmation, token- identity physicalism has nothing to recommend
it over its more robust type-identity rival. Moreover, so far from
protecting physicalism from empirical disconfirmation, the token-
identity version is itself in serious danger of being sidelined, if not
actually falsified, by the emergence in the light of current and future
research of the kind of'perfect correlation' between psychological and
physiological measures that according to originator of the identity
theory, psychologist E.G. Boring (1933, p. 16) constitutes identity".^''

He further says that if by using the recently described techniques

of brain imaging, it is possible to have a perfect correlation between
mentally and physically specified variables then in that case we can
confidently assert that at least some speciable type-identity statements
are known to be true. When this will happen, token-identity
physicalism will not be favoured by anybody. This expectation,
according to him, is more than likely to be true.

Putnam holds the view that identity between mental and physical
events that is asserted by the token-physicalism is mysterious and

" . Ibid, p-89.

 74

unexplained. Because this theory does not provide any means by which
it can be determined that which physical tokens are identical with which
mental states. That is why we cannot identify someone's psychological
and perceptual states in physical terms. Putnam thinks that this problem
is something which an identity theorist should be aware of.

Davidson (1980) formulated an interesting form of token identity

which is known as anomalous monism. According to this theory, under
the neural descriptions causal relations occur. It does not occur under
the description of psychological language. It is an intentional predicate
which is used by the descriptions of psychological language but these
predicates do not occur in law statements due to indeterminacy of
translation and of interpretation. Thus it is only on the level of
individual events that mind-brain identities can occur. If it is found that
two events share the same causes and effects then characterized under
different descriptions, they must be the same event. Hence, in
identifying a token mental event with a token physical event we need
to determine whether they share the same causes and effects or not.

Quine has observations on Davidson's principle of individuation

and says that the principle is viciously circular. Because this principle
individuates events by quantifying over causes and effects which are,
themselves, events. Putnam draws our attention on this issue in the
following way. According to Putnam, someone may imagine to come
to the conclusion whether the firing of a small group of neurons with
an "experience of blue" is or is not token identical. There will have a
host of effect in the firing of the group of neurons, for example,
excitation of other neurons. Ordinarily, we would not think or speak of
this host of effects as the effects of our experiencing blue. If it is true
that experience of blue and the firing of the group of neurons are
 75

identical then it is also true that those other excitations are effects of the
experience of blue. Again, if it is true that experience of blue and the
activity of a larger part of the brain, including the other neurons in
question are identical, then those other excitation events will not be the
effect of event rather these will be part of the event, that is, the
experience of blue. Here, by employing Davidson's criterion one
cannot decide which group of excitation events is identical with the
experience of blue. There is no criterion to decide the identity. It is a
unique sort of identity.

Putnam observes that there is a problem of circularity in the

above discussion. Because, before determining the neural event which
is identical with sensation of blue one will have to decide the relevant
event. But here one has already decided on the identity in question,
Putnam says that as there is no non-circular way by which we can
determine the specific mental events and the specific neural events
which are identical for the supposed identity so there is no possibility
of objective evidence. From this it is evident that to individuate mental
events there are no physical means and thereby, to produce sensations
in normal observers, there is no account of the causal mechanisms.
Thus Putnam believes that anomalous monism fails to have explanation
for one of the basic facts of perception.

Quine's formulation of objection and the force of his criticisms

were gladly accepted by Davidson. When Quine says that the suggested
criterion for individuating event is radically unsatisfactory, Davidson
does not deny.
 76

So far we have discussed identity theory of mind in its type-token

distinction. But before ending this section we would like to incorporate
the view of J. Kim in this regard.

In describing the nature of token physicalism Kim says that it is

a form of non reductivism. Because this theory says nothing about the
relation between mental properties and physical properties. But for the
reduction of mental to physical, such relationships are generally taken
to be necessary. But all this does not mean that mind-body reduction is
denied by token physicalism; rather this theory has commitment on this
issue. The philosophers who support token physicalism believe that
reductionism is false. They also claim that token physicalism is
sufficiently physicalism.

In contrast to token physicalism, Kim says that, type physicalism

is a form of 'reductionist' or 'reductive' physicalism. Because this
theory claims that over and above physical properties there are no
mental properties. This theory holds that mental properties are just
physical properties and therefore these are identical. This theory thus
entails that over and above physical facts there are no mental facts. It is
true that there are mentalistic expressions which we continue to find
out as because these are useful and practically indispensable. But type
physicalism believes that in principle physical language is sufficient to
describe all the facts and therefore expulsion of mentalistic expressions
will not affect the total descriptive power of our language.

While contrasting the type physicalism with token physicalism,

Kim says that as a materialistic doctrine the former is a strong and
robust one and that is why this form of physicalism is classic identity
theory. Token physicalism is a weak doctrine. It only says that by the
 77

same type of entities the mental properties and physical properties are
instantiated. An event or occurrence that has mental properties also has
some physical properties or other. But about the relationship between
mental properties, such as, pains, itches, thoughts, consciousness, and
physical properties, such as, neural events, this theory has no comment.

From the above analysis it is clear that Kim extends his strong
support in favour of type physicalism. But in the end he says,
"Perhaps it is too strong to be true."^^

^* J. Kim; Philosophy of Mind, p-105.