References
- Wooldridge , Dean E. 1963 . The Machinery of the Brain See: (McGraw-Hill Paperback, Chapter 5.
- Thorpe , W. H. 1966 . “Ethology and Consciousness,” in ” . In Brain and Conscious Experience Edited by: Eccles , J. C. New York : Springer-Verlag . See: Chapter 19.
- It is often overlooked by those who counsel agnosticism on the issue of sub-human animal consciousness (e.g., Eccles in the discussion of Thorpe's paper, op. cit.) that primitive Cartesianism opens the door to solipsism: perhaps I am the only animal with a soul. Human-like speech can hardly be a necessary condition of consciousness; no one would say the infant child or the aphasic is unconscious.
- It is because they are fairly regular that we are able to label irregular associations (e.g., being whipped and feeling lust) ‘perverse’.
- Shaffer , Jerome A. 1968 . Philosophy of Mind Englewood Cliffs , N.J. : Prentice-Hall . See: Inc., Chapter 2, for a similar point in another connection.
- 1970 . The Mind-Brain identity Theory London and New York : Macmillan . and St. Martin's Press, p. 29.
- 1959 . The Philosophical Review One of the co-founders of the theory, J. J. C. Smart, rejects this description for the reason that if two things are in fact identical they cannot be said to be correlated: “You cannot correlate something with itself” (”Sensations and Brain Processes,” LXVIII, No. 2 [April, 142). But of course one needs the correlation before one can claim the identity.
- 1965 . The Review of Metaphysics However it is not denied by proponents of this version that banishing psychological language from ordinary discourse would be in the highest degree impractical (see: Richard Rorty, “Mind-Body Identity, Privacy, and Categories,” XIX [], reprinted in Borst, op. cit., especially pp.194 and 198–199.)
- Brandt , Richard and Kim , Jaegwon . 1967 . “The Logic of the Identity Theory,” . In The Journal of Philosophy LXIV, No. 17 (September 7,.
- 1957 . Scientific American See, e.g., J. D. French, “The Reticular Formation,” (May. Reprinted in Scientific American reprint no. 66.
- The Encyclopedia of Human Behavior New York : Doubleday . See, e.g., R. M. Goldenson, “Somnambulism,” in II, 1240–1241. Contrary to popular belief, sleep-walkers do fall down stairs or step in front of moving cars, so obviously they are not attentive to essential incoming stimuli.
- Huxley , T. H. 1874 . The Problems of Philosophy Boston : Allyn and Bacon . “On the Hypothesis that Animals are Automata and Its History,” reprinted in William P. Alston and Richard B. Brandt Inc., 1967), pp. 403–414. Huxley's argument was drawn from a study by E. Mesnet, De l'Automatisme de la Mémoire et du Souvenir dans le Somnambulisme Pathologique, of a French sergeant who apparently had part of his left parietal lobe destroyed by a Prussian bullet. It is ironical that Huxley thought this case supported Epiphenomenalism, since the unfortunate soldier was able to do what he did only at the cost of conscious disconnection from his environment.
- Andersson , Bengt . 1966 . “The Physiology of Thirst,” in ” . In Progress in Physiological Psychology 193 – 194 . New York and London : Academic Press . I
- Actually the preoptic region and lateral hypothalamus of the goat brain, when stimulated, produce the same ‘drinking reflex’. But this is no problem for PSI: a single generic P-event can have multiple spatial locations in the brain.
- It hardly could: not more than a small fraction of neuronal firings in the mammalian brain is accompanied by conscious experience, for important reasons to be discussed in the next section of this paper.
- See, e.g., the statement by D. M. Armstrong in “The Nature of Mind,” reprinted as amended in Borst (op. cit.), that “In fact the verdict of modern science seems to be that the sole cause [italics mine—RP] of mind-betokening behaviour in man and the higher animals is the physico-chemical workings of the central nervous system” (P. 73).
- See, e.g., Rorty (op. cit., pp. 192–193), where he says: “The absurdity of saying, ‘Nobody has ever felt a pain’ is no greater than that of saying ‘Nobody has ever seen a demon’, if we have a suitable answer to the question ‘What was I reporting when I said I felt a pain?’”
- 1970 . The Mind of Man London : BBC Publications . A particularly lucid semi-popular account is provided in Nigel Calder, Chapter 8. I have used his example of learning to use a spoon (pp. 150–153) in what follows.
- I have profited from discussion of earlier versions of this paper with David M. Armstrong (by correspondence), Jonathan Bennett, Jaegwon Kim (by correspondence), David Braybrooke and several other colleagues at Dalhousie.