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The Reasons of a Materialist

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Laurence Goldstein
Laurence Goldstein
Affiliation:
University of Hong Kong
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Abstract

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Type
Discussion
Information
Philosophy , Volume 55 , Issue 212 , April 1980 , pp. 249 - 252
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1980

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References

1 Glassen, P., ‘J. J. C. Smart, Materialism and Occam's Razor’, Philosophy 51, No. 197 (07 1976), 349–352.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 Like Glassen, I shall assume that the brain is the only organ that a materialist or ‘physicalist’ could plausibly claim to be identical with the mind.

3 See Thorburn, W. M., ‘The Myth of Ockham's Razor’, Mind 27, No. 107 (07 1918), 345–353.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 de Ockham, G., Super Quatuor Libros Sententiarum Earumdemque Decisiones (Lugduni, 1945) 1, d. 14, q. 2 GGoogle Scholar. This commentary on the Sentences of Peter Lombard was written in about 1320.

5 For example, at Summa Totius Logicae I, §12. A translation of the first book of the Summa is to be found in Loux, M., Ockham's Theory of Terms (Indiana: University of Notre Dame, 1974).Google Scholar

6 Searle, J., Speech Acts (Cambridge University Press), 29.Google Scholar

7 Glassen himself recognizes that neither Occam nor the materialists would accept that Occam's Razor is a non-physical thing.

8 For Occam, the primary signs are words of mental language which he identifies as acts (in the Aristotelian sense of actualities) of understanding.

9 Summa Totius Logicae, §§14–16. This Summa may be regarded as a sustained attempt to dispel the ancient illusion ‘Unum nomen, unum nominatum’.

10 See, for example, Sellars, W., ‘Abstract Entities’, Review of Metaphysics 16, No. 64 (06 1963), 627–671.Google Scholar