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Can the Theory of the Contingent Identity Between Sensation-States and Brain-States Be Made Empirical?
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
Extract
Since its inception, roughly sixteen years ago, the theory of the contingent identity of mental-states and brain-states has been argued on many fronts. I want here to examine and to try to meet one in particular of the objections raised in connection with this theory. The objection has been stated with especial force by Peter Herbst.
Let us then investigate a proposition that there is a particular mental entity which is contingently identical with a particular brain state. In order to be able to test it, we must know which mental entity is supposed to be identical with what brain state. Therefore we need at least two clear and independent identifying references to serve as the basis of our proposition of identity. They must each be sufficient to individuate an entity, or else we cannot say what is identical with what, and they must be independent of each other, or else the identity proposition expressed in terms of them becomes tautologous.
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- Copyright © The Authors 1974
References
1 Feigl, Vide H. “The ‘Mental’ and the ‘Physical’,” Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 2, Minneapolis, 1958Google Scholar; Place, U. T. “Is Consciousness a Brain Process?”, British journal of Psychology, XLVII (1956)Google Scholar; Smart, J. J. C. “Sensations and Brain Processes,” Philosophical Review, LXVII (1959).Google Scholar
2 Herbst, P. “A Critique of the Materialist Identity Theory,” The Identity Theory of Mind,ed. Presley, C. F. Queensland, 1967, pp. 57–56.Google Scholar
3 Ibid., p. 57–58, emphasis added.
4 Ibid., p. 58.
5 Ibid., p. 59.
6 We would do well at this point to raise and rebut a particularly seductive counterexample to the necessary condition being proffered here for the numerical identity of properties. The objection is just this: the color of apples is (one and the same with) the color of tomatoes, yet obviously instances of red apples are not instances of red tomatoes. This objection, I would argue, is confused. I concur in the claim that the color of apples is identical with the color of tomatoes, but I would go on to point out that every instance of one of these properties does as a matter of fact co-habit with an instance of the other. The color of apples (which happens to be the color red) is, of course, instanced in apples, but so too is it instanced in cherries, some lipsticks, arterial blood, and for that matter, tomatoes. Similarly for the color of tomatoes. In any particular case where the color of apples (red) is instanced, we happen to find that the color of tomatoes (red) is also instanced there. Our criterion of numerical identity of properties thus emerges unscathed from this challenge.
7 P. Herbst, op. cit., pp. 58–59.
8 Woods, M. J. “Identity and Individuation,” Analytical Philosophy, 2nd series, ed. Butler, R.J. Oxford, 1965.Google Scholar
9 See the last quotation in Section 1 above.
10 The rebuttal to be anticipated is that since the reduction of thermodynamics to statistical mecahanics postulates no time-lag whatever, there is an implication that there is in fact no time-lag, and the evidence adduced in support of the explicit claims of the reduction also support the latter implication.
It is easy to see that this argument is mistaken. Newton’s Theory in similar fashion was silent on the question of the velocity at which gravitational fields were propagated. The assumption which was often imposed on the Theory from without was that the propagation was instantaneous, that is, that there was a zero time-lag. But scientists, including Newton (see Cajori’s, Appendix to the Principia, trans. by Motte, A. revised by Cajori, F. Berkeley, 1966, p. 637)Google Scholar have recognized that the hypothesis of a zero time-lag (infinite velocity) or a non-zero time-lag (finite velocity) could be added to the theory without inducing inconsistency. None of the evidence of tidal or planetary phenomena which solidly confirmed the theory lent more weight to either of these hypotheses. The ‘received’ argument fails, as we should both expect and desire, in the case of Newton’s Theory also.