Psychophysical and theoretical identifications

Australasian Journal of Philosophy

Volumn 50, Issue 3, 1972, Pages 249-258

  Lewis, David ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 77949618406     PISSN: 00048402     EISSN: 14716828     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00048407212341301     Document Type: Article

References (17)

1. Journal of Philosophy, 63 (1966): 17-25.
2. See my 'How to Define Theoretical Terms', Journal of Philosophy, 67 (1970): 427-446.
3. Since advocated also by D. M. Armstrong, in A Materialist Theory of the Mind (New York: Humanities Press, (1968). He expresses it thus: 'The concept of a mental state is primarily the concept of a state of the person apt for bringing about a certain sort of behaviour [and secondarily also, in some cases] apt for being brought about by a certain sort of stimulus', p. 82.
4. The story itself might imply this. If, for instance, the story said 'X saw Y give Z the candlestick while the three of them were alone in the billiard room at 9:17', then the story could not possibly be true of more than one triple.
5. 'What Theories are Not', in Nagel, Suppes and Tarski eds., Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science (Stanford University Press, (1962): 247.
6. Notation: boldface names and variables denote n-tuples; the corresponding subscripted names and variables denote components of n-tuples. For instance, t is. This notation is easily dispensable, and hence carries no ontic commitment to n-tuples.
7. That is, (). Note that, T[x] does not imply, T[x], and does not say that Tis uniquely realized.
8. On the assumptions—reasonable for the postulate of a scientific theory—that the T-terms occur purely referentially in the postulate, and in such a way that the postulate is false if any of them are denotationless. We shall make these assumptions henceforth.
9. Most recently in Philosophical Foundations of Physics (New York: Basic Books, (1966): 265-274. Carnap, of course, has in mind the case in which the O-terms belong to an observation language.
10. t = * means that each ti,- is denotationless. Let * be some chosen necessarily denotationless name; then * is>*… *< and t = * is equivalent to the conjunction of all the identities t1 = *.
11. Given a theory of descriptions which makes an identity true whenever both its terms have the status of improper descriptions, false whenever one term has that status and the other does not. This might best be the theory of descriptions in Dana Scott, 'Existence and Description in Formal Logic', in R. Schoenman, ed., Bertrand Russell: Philosopher of the Century (London: Allen & Unwin, (1967).
12. In general, or in the case of a given species, or in the case of a given person. It might turn out that the causal roles definitive of mental states are occupied by different neural (or other) states in different organisms. See my discussion of Hilary Putnam 'Psychological Predicates' in Journal of Philosophy, 66 (1969): 23-25.
13. It may be objected that the number of mental states is infinite, or at least enormous; for instance, there are as many states of belief as there are propositions to be believed. But it would be better to say that there is one state of belief, and it is a relational state, relating people to propositions. (Similarly, centigrade temperature is a relational state, relating objects to numbers.) The platitudes involving belief would, of course, contain universally quantified proposition-variables. Likewise for other mental states with intentional objects.
14. Wilfrid Sellars, 'Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind', in Feigl and Scriven, eds., Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, I (University of Minnesota Press, (1956): 309-320.
15. Two myths which cannot both be true together can nevertheless both be good together. Part of my myth says that names of color-sensations were T-terms, introduced using names of colors as O-terms. If this is a good myth, we should be able to define 'sensation of red' roughly as 'that state apt for being brought about by the presence of something red (before one's open eyes, in good light, etc.)'. A second myth says that names of colors were T-terms introduced using names of color-sensations as O-terms. If this second myth is good, we should be able to define 'red' roughly as 'that property of things apt for bringing about the sensation of red'. The two myths could not both be true, for which came first: names of color-sensations or of colors ? But they could both be good. We could have a circle in which colors are correctly defined in terms of sensations and sensations are correctly defined in terms of colors. We could not discover the meanings both of names of colors and of names of color-sensations just by looking at the circle of correct definitions, but so what?
16. See 'How to Define Theoretical Terms': 440-441.
17. By Armstrong, in A Materialist Theory of the Mind, pp. 100-113. He finds independent grounds for denying the infallibility of introspection.