Ullin T. Place
(1924-2000)
Ullin T. Place worked with
J.J.C.Smart to develop the
identity theory of mind, that is to say that the mind is identical to the material brain, and that an
immaterial mind is a mere epiphenomenon.
The first philosophers to argue for an identity of mind (or consciousness) and brain include
Ullin T. Place (1956) and
Herbert Feigl (1958).
Place explicitly describes "consciousness as a brain process," specifically as "patterns" of brain activity. He does not trivialize this identity as a succession of individual "mental events and physical events" in some kind of causal chain. He compares this identity to the idea that "lightning is a motion of electrical charges."
("Is Consciousness a Brain Process?", in British Journal of Psychology, 47, pp.44-50 (1956))
Herbert Feigl's work was independent of Place's, but he said that the fundamental idea had been held by many earlier materialist (monist) thinkers. He thought it was stated clearly by
Rudolf Carnap in 1925. Feigl describes his own thesis:
The identity thesis which I wish to clarify and to defend asserts that the states of direct experience which conscious beings "live through" and those which we confidently ascribe to some of the higher animals, are identical with certain (presumably configurational) aspects of the neural processes in these organisms.
("The 'Mental' and the 'Physical'", in Concepts, Theories, and the Mind-Body Problem, University of Minnesota Press (1958), p.150)
J.J.C.Smart clarified and extended the identity theory of his colleague U.T.Place
When I say that a sensation is a brain process or
that lightning is an electric discharge, I am using
"is" in the sense of strict identity. (Just as in
the — in this case necessary — proposition "7 is
identical with the smallest prime number
greater than 5.") When I say that a sensation is a
brain process or that lightning is an electric dis-
charge I do not mean just that the sensation is
somehow spatially or temporally continuous
with the brain process or that the lightning is
just spatially or temporally continuous with the
discharge.
("Sensations and Brain Processes", in Philosophical Review 68 pp. 141-156 (1959))
Place studied under
Gilbert Ryle and was strongly influenced by Ryle's famous book
The Concept of Mind
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