- I have developed this objection more fully elsewhere Sensations, Brain-Processes and Colours Australasian Journal of Philosophy Dec. 1963 41 3 Smart makes a concession to it parallel to that he makes to Martin's case, and I do not describe the details of both cases here, since it seems that once the concession is made, to whatever objection it may be, the consequences follow which I try to indicate. It is strange that, in a different context, a few pages earlier (pp. 66–7), Smart in fact allows that one person's seeing the colours of the Union Jack may differ qualitatively from another's seeing them, since, while the discriminations may be the same, the experiences can be supposed to be different. Once this has been allowed it seems that internal consistency alone, quite apart from Martin's case (or mine), would require a revision of the positive account of ‘colour’ (whether ‘being a colour’ or ‘seeing a colour’) by the addition of ‘colour experiences’ to the analysis.
- See above Sensations, Brain-Processes and Colours Australasian Journal of Philosophy Dec. 1963 41 3
- See, too, his Further Remarks on Sensations and Brain Processes Philosophical Review July 1961 LXX 3 407 407
- Ayer , A.J. 1959 . Privacy . Proceedings of the British Academy , reprinted in The Concept of a Person.
- 99 – 101 . passim.
- 68 – 68 . 90, 94.
- 1963 . Is Introspective Knowledge Incorrigible? . Philosophical Review , I.XXII ( 4 ) Oct. Each author acknowledges the independent recognition by the other of the point common to them.
- See Moore G.E. Ethics Chapter III.
- 101 – 101 .
- Russell makes frequent use of the device, in a variety of contexts, and without much diffidence. Quine (in From a Logical Point of View and Methods of Logic makes a small use of it, with some little diffidence. Flew in A New Approach to Psychical Research seems to regard it as self-evident. The discussions of it in Kneale's Development of Logic or Stebbing's Modern Introduction to Logic or Baldwin's Dictionary of Philosophy and Psychology are unilluminating.
- 11 – 12 .
- In Broad's sense. See The Mind and its Place in Nature Chapter II.
- Assuming, as is clearly the case, that biochemical forces and the life force are both being thought of as causal factors, in the same sense of ‘causal’. The doctrine that different explanations of the same phenomenon may be compatible (Ryle, Warnock and others) does not cover this case, and has indeed been made to carry much more that it is capable of (as in, e.g., Gardiner P. The Nature of Historical Explanation 10 11 and elsewhere). We may explain the change in pattern of a set of billiard balls by pointing to the fact that one, in motion, struck another. But it may be that Houdini, under the table, by dexterous knocking and bumping, produces exactly the same final situation from exactly the same initial situation (i.e., original arrangement plus ball in certain motion). It would be remarkable if we were to treat these explanations by sets of sufficient conditions as compatible.
- Here again, I think, the doctrine of the compatibility of explanations (see above, Gardiner P. The Nature of Historical Explanation 10 11 has been made to carry more than it can bear. It may be that explanations of a man's behaviour by reference to his vanity, on the one hand, and by reference to the workings of his brain, on the other, are compatible. But it is hard to think of having a pain, for example, as something dispositional, like vanity; it seems most natural to think of it as an event or process, and to suppose it to function as a cause in the way a change in the brain does. At least—all I wish to claim here—the common sense interactionist does think in this way, and is therefore not saved from the present objection to him by any doctrine about the compatibility of explanations.
Australasian Journal of Philosophy
Volume 42, 1964 - Issue 2