Ep. 401: Mind/Brain Identity Theory (U.T. Place, J.J.C. Smart) (Part One)
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How do U.T. Place and J.J.C. Smart argue that consciousness can be a brain process?
You're listening to the Partially Examined Life, a podcast by some guys who at one point set on doing philosophy for a living, but then thought better of it. Our question for episode 401 is something like, how can the mind be the brain? And we read two foundational articles in the Mind-Brain Identity Theory, UT Places, Is Consciousness a Brain Process? from 1956, and JJC Smarts, Sensations and Brain Processes from 1959. For more information about the text and the podcast, please see PartiallyExaminedLife.com. This is Mark Lintemeyer and nothing
else in Madison, Wisconsin. This is Wes Alwan having an experience which is like what someone would be experiencing if they were podcasting from Cambridge, Massachusetts. And this is Christopher
Heath running back and forth in North Hollywood, California.
This is Seth Paskin walking into a mass of tiny particles in suspension in Austin, Texas.
You didn't want to say you were seeing like a striped multicolored
patch or something? No. I genuinely could not have disliked the smart paper more than I did. Wow. Wow. I
was surprised to enjoy them both, given my past prejudices. Yeah, I'm surprised to hear that, Wes. But yeah, when you see the multicolor patch example, it's the kind of thing that made me... Want to quit grad school as soon
as I read
this kind of writing. But sure. And then just the the tenor of it is so I don't want to say arrogant. No, I was going to say it's so cold and, you know, hey, maybe we don't have any consciousness. No one's feeling anything, that kind of thing. But now I now I understand, I think, the kind of important point.
Yeah, it's important to contextualize it too, right? Like they're in the midst of behaviorism and dualism. And they're where some of these, to me, pretty outlandish things are being stated, both behaviorism and dualism. And so knowing that they're responding to and trying to make sense of a middle position between those helps me with it coming across as kind of void of any passion. I don't know. Yeah, interestingly,
we got to as optional additional things. Both these writers, who were both at Adelaide University in Australia at the time in the 50s, we got to hear later from them. So the Stanford Encyclopedia article on the mind, brain, and identity theory is actually by JJC Smart. And of course, he's referring to himself in the third person. He could have written the whole thing as a diary.
He's
describing his
own
article. But you get to see a little like what he sees the landscape as of, it was written in 2000, updated in 2007. He passed away in 2012. And then there was also an article, which I overall would not recommend, but by UT plays called 35 Years On, Is Consciousness Still a Brain Process? From 1989, where he actually responds to the Davidson paper that we read. So that was interesting, even though I didn't really understand all of it. It wasn't super interesting, but... No, but in both cases, I feel like the intro where they just like, yeah, we're still here and these arguments are still relevant. And but one of them says, you know, at the time that these were written in the 50s, like dualism was the standard view.
And now it seems like you can't even find somebody that thinks dualism is the preferred view. Although on this podcast, I feel like we. have, following the sentiments of Wes, when we have treated these in the past, we have run into folks like Chalmers and Ned Block and the what is it like to be a bat and all these people that Dennett was arguing against who seem to think, yes, there is some irreducibly mental thing that even if in some sense it is the same as a, you know, we want to be modest and say mind and body or mind and brain are the same thing overall. Still, there are properties that are irreducibly mental or properties. They're irreducibly physical. And we'll look at these folks. I don't think they're entirely foreign to this.
They admit that mental talk is different than physical talk and has a different logic to it. So it's not like for every mental term you can just translate.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
How do U.T. Place and J.J.C. Smart argue that consciousness can be a brain process?
0:07–10:00
2
What is the difference between a‑priori arguments against mind‑brain identity and scientific evidence?
10:00–28:04
3
How does the “cloud‑of‑water‑droplets” analogy illustrate composition versus correlation?
28:04–42:45
4
Why do Place and Smart distinguish between identity‑by‑definition and identity‑by‑composition?
42:45–49:35