Some Supposed Advantages of Materialism

Author(s): O. H. Green
Source: Analysis, Vol. 33, No. 4 (Mar., 1973), pp. 124-129
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Committee
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 SOME SUPPOSED ADVANTAGES OF MATERIALISM

By O. H. GREEN

concern of philosophers who defend materialism has

THE primary
been to show, as U.T. Place put it, 'that the thesis that conscious-
ness is a process in the brain cannot be dismissed on logical grounds'
('Is Consciousness a Brain Process?' reprinted in V. C. Chappell, ed.,
The Philosophyof Mind, p. 102). Over and above this, they have largely
been content to point out certain advantages which materialism appears
to offer. The empirical basis which the theory requires has received
little attention from its philosophical proponents; they leave such
experimental confirmation as can be given the theory to physiologists.
I wish to argue that a consideration of the empirical basis of materialism
shows that some advantages claimed for materialism are supposed
advantages only.

I
The advantages which I have in mind concern the resolution of the
problem of other minds and the elimination of troublesome psycho-
physical connections. Materialism has frequently been taken to provide
a straightforward, scientific account of knowledge of the minds of
others. The details of the account vary somewhat. Sometimes appeal is
made directly to the claimed identity of mental states with brain states;
in other cases a causal analysis of mental concepts is employed as well.
I shall refer to the former approach as the Basic Position and to the latter
as the Causal Position.
Philosophers who take the Basic Position reason that if mental
states are identical with brain states, all that is necessary to determine
that another person has a certain mental state is to discover that his
brain is in the relevant state, which it is possible for physiology to do.
It is this approach which is set out in the following passages:
[According to materialism] a person's sensations are processes in his
brain, no more and no less, and the occurrenceof brain processes can be
inferredby certifiablemethods-the regularmethods of scientific,or more
particularlyof physiological, inquiry. (V. C. Chappell,ed., op. cit., Intro-
duction, p. 19.)
Suppose ... that the identity theory of mind and body is true and known
to be so. . . . Then the epistemological problem of other minds has an
easy solution. There would be reliable methods of determiningwhether
that object over there has a mind because the occurrence of brain states
can be determined by scientific methods-the methods of physiological
inquiry. (JamesF. Tomberlin, 'Plantinga'sPuzzles about God and Other
Minds', ThePhilosophical Forum,I (1969), 384-85.)
124

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 SOME SUPPOSED ADVANTAGES OF MATERIALISM 125
The argument of philosophers who adopt the Causal Position is that
mental states are the causes of certain patterns of behaviour, and physi-
ology reveals that the causes of the behaviour are brain states, in this
way providing a way of solving the problem of other minds. In the
following passages it is this approach which is suggested:
Our [causal]account of the nature of mental states makes the problem of
the existence of other minds particularlyeasy to solve ..................
We need only three premisses to infer the existence of a mind that this
behaviour is an expression of. (i) The behaviour has some cause; (ii) the
cause lies in the behaving person; (iii) the cause is an 'adequate'cause-
it has a complexitywhich correspondsto the complexity of the behaviour.
(D. M. Armstrong, A MaterialistTheoryof Mind,pp. 123, 125.)
The causes of behaviour which are supposed to be mental states are, in
Armstrong's view, states of the brain, and it is the business of physiology
to discover them.
Central-StateMaterialists construe the problem of other minds as a
problem in establishinglike causes for like behaviouraleffects...............
By showing that in both of us the causes of behaviourlie in the brain, we
show both that he has a mind, as we do, and that he has a mind like ours.
(Keith Campbell,BodyandMind,pp. 119-120.)
The second advantage claimed for materialism is that it eliminates
the bothersome psycho-physical connections which clutter the landscape
presented by interactionism, epiphenomenalism, and other dualistic
theories. This point is given special emphasis by J. J. C. Smart, who
argues for materialism in this way:
If it is agreed that there are no cogent philosophical arguments which
force us into accepting dualism, and if the brain process theory and
dualism are equally consistent with the facts, then the principles of
parsimony and simplicity seem to me to decide overwhelmingly in
favour of the brainprocess theory. [For] dualisminvolves a large number
of irreduciblepsychophysicallaws . . . of a queer sort. ('Sensations and
Brain Processes', reprintedin Chappell,ed., op. cit., p. 172.)

II
The problem of other minds is, roughly, the problem of how one can
know that others have thoughts and feelings. It is tempting to believe
that if thoughts and feelings are identical with brain states, knowledge
of other minds will be possible in just the way we know about other
brains-by physiological examination. This is, of course, the Basic
Position. It must be remembered, however, that we can take thoughts
and feelings to be identical with brain states only if we know (among
other things) that particular thoughts and feelings occur when, and only
when, certain brain states do. The question thus arises as to how this
knowledge is possible. In order to establish the necessary co-occurrence,
it must be determined that thoughts and feelings occur at just the times

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126 ANALYSIS

when the relevant brain states occur. In one's own case this could be
done straightforwardly;it would simply involve doing a bit of intros-
pection and some physiology. The times when one had a thought or
feeling would be noted and matchedwith the times when brain states
occurred. This technique could not be employed in the case of other
people, however, and the introspectivephysiologistwould be unpardon-
ably hasty in generalisingfrom his own case. In order to establishthat
there is a general correlation of mental states with brain states, it is
necessary to determine that other people have thoughts and feelings
independentlyof any considerationof their brain states. For, since the
identity of brain states with mental states depends on their correlation,
one can hardly rely on their identity in order to determinethat they
are correlated. The appeal to the identity of brain states with mental
states fails to provide a solution to the problem of other minds
because materialismcan be known to be true only if an independent
solution alreadyexists.
At this point the differencebetween the Basic Position and the
CausalPosition becomes important. The CausalPosition appearsnot
to depend on the establishmentof a correlationbetween mental states
and brain states, but ratherproceeds directly from a considerationof
behaviour. The line of reasoningis as follows. An itch, which we may
take as an example,is the cause of a certainkind of behaviour-scratch-
ing. From physiologicalinvestigationswe find that a brain state causes
this behaviour. We conclude that, as a matterof fact, an itch is a brain
state.
The crucialquestionhere is whetherwe can reasonablysuppose that
the cause of the behaviour is (simply) a brain state. It is a remarkable
fact that, in ignorance of our brain states, we are able to ascribeitches
to ourselvesand to others and to explainour behaviouras being caused
by such feelings. In doing these things we do not conceive of itches as
bare causes. If we stimulatea man's brain so as to make him scratch,
although he doesn't feel anything, we have induced in him a cause of
scratchingbut not an itch. And when we say that a man scratched
because he had an itch (and not because his brain had been tampered
with, etc.), we are not just saying that whatevercausesscratchingcaused
him to scratch,which is no explanation. This is not to say that the
concept of an itch is not (at least in part) to be explainedin terms of the
causationof scratching,andit is not to deny thatbrainstatesareinvolved
in the causationof such behaviour. But it does meanthat thereis a good
case for thinking that, even though brain states may be at least partial
causes of the behaviour, certainfeelings are also causallyinvolved. A
purely physiological considerationof the causes of behaviour will not
give us knowledge of other persons' feelings.
To this conclusion the defender of the Causal Position will want to

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 SOME SUPPOSED ADVANTAGES OF MATERIALISM 127

object. He might argue,for one thing, that the occurrenceof an appro-

priate brain state is sufficientto cause scratching, so that there is no
reason to bring a supposed feeling into the causal explanationof the
behaviour. But the only way to show this is to supposethe behaviourto
result from the occurrence of the brain state in the absence of any
feeling, and this turn of events would empiricallyfalsify the materialist's
thesis that feelings and brain states are identical.
The proponent of the CausalPosition might also object that the
feeling of an itch is identicalwith a brain state, so that a physiological
study of the causes of the relevant behaviour is sufficient to obtain
knowledge of other people's feelings. But what is the basis for this
identity claim? It cannot be that the brain state alone accounts for the
behaviour typical of having an itch, for that is just what is in doubt.
There remainsthe possibility of basing the claim on the fact that the
feelings occurwhen, and only when, the brainstatesdo. But in that case
we are back to the Basic Position, which presupposesan independent
solution to the problem of our knowledge of the feelings of others.

III
If mental states and brain states turned out to be identical, certain
kinds of psycho-physical connections would be eliminated. There
would hardlybe any question of a causalconnection between them, for
example. But this does not mean that we would be in a position to
eliminateall psycho-physicallinks. In orderto see this we must consider
again the empiricalbasis which materialismrequires.
It is important to note that the identity of brain states and mental
states cannot be as simply establishedas can many other cases of con-
tingent identity. To show that Mr. Nixon is identicalwith the President
of the United States (in 1972), it must be determined(among other
things) that public appearancesof the Presidentcoincide with those of
Mr. Nixon. This can be ascertainedby observationsof a single sort-
by seeing the man in question. The case is differentwhen we set about
showing that a thought or feeling is identical with a brain state. The
occurrenceof a brain state is determinedby the use of instrumentsof
appropriatekinds,but the occurrenceof a thought or feeling is accessible
in one's own case to introspection and in the case of others through
observation of their behaviour, etc. No one observation, not even
observations of the same kind, will be sufficientto show that mental
states are correlated with brain states. The correlation will involve
matching one set of observation-conditions,those relevant to brain
states, with another, those appropriateto mental states. Thus, a link
between physiologicalobservation-conditionsand psychologicalobserv-
ation-conditions is required if materialism is to be shown to be true,
even if other psycho-physical connections can be eliminated. The

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128 ANALYSIS

world-view presented by materialismis, in this respect, not quite so

streamlinedas some of its advocateshave supposed.
IV
The materialisttheory that mental states are identical with brain
states can be true only if the following principle,which we may call the
CorrelationPrinciple, is true: For any mental state M, there is a brain
state B which obtains when, and only when, M does. Moreover, the
truth of the materialisttheory requiresthat the CorrelationPrinciplebe
established empirically; for the identity of mental states with brain
states is held to be, not a matter of a priori necessity, but a contingent
matter of fact. The argument of this paper has been that in thinking
thatmaterialismoffersthe advantagesof a simplesolution to the problem
of other minds and a world-view without the encumbranceof psycho-
physical connections, philosophers overlook the dependence of the
theory on the empiricalconfirmationof the CorrelationPrinciple.
Materialistsdislike talk of a correlationof states of consciousness
with brain states, for, as Smartsuggests, 'to say that they are correlated
is to say that they are something "over and above". You cannot
correlate something with itself.' ('Sensations and Brain Processes',
reprintedin V. C. Chappell,ed., of. cit., p. 161.) Thus it may be objected
that it is question-beggingto saddlethe materialistwith the Correlation
Principle. I do not think that this is the case, however. The identity of
mental states and brain states, if it obtains, cannot be discovered a
priori. Establishingit involves showing that certainconditions are met,
including the co-occurrenceof the putatively identical states. This, in
turn, requires that both pysiological and psychological observationsbe
made. Only this is requiredfor the argument. The question of whether
mental states and brain states are identical is left open. It is certain
advantagesof the identification,supposing that it is possible, which are
called into question.
Remarksmade by Smart and Armstrong suggest that materialism
may affordan insight about other minds and a simplerworld-view in a
way which the argumentseems to overlook. It is reasonableto suppose,
they suggest, that examination of a person's brain might come to
constitute a criterionfor his being in a mental state, and, indeed, might
become the standardway of determininghis state of mind. If this is so,
then no reliance on psychological considerations or correlations of
observation-conditionsis required. Here it must be stressed,however,
that before this hegemony of physiology could be established, the
necessary psycho-physical correlations would have to be discovered
independently. It is also worth noting that if brain states were criteria
for mental states, this would mean that the concept of a mental state
would be explained, in part at least, by reference to brain states. The

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 AESTHETIC JUDGMENTS AND NON-AESTHETIC CONDITIONS 129

identity between mental states and brain states would in that case no
longer be contingent.

TulaneUniversity

AESTHETIC JUDGMENTS AND NON-AESTHETIC

CONDITIONS

By GARY ISEMINGER

N his widely-discussed article 'Aesthetic Concepts' (The Philosophical

Review, Vol. 68, 1959) Frank Sibley makes two claims which, given an
initially plausible assumption, appear to be contradictory. He repeats
these claims in later articles ('Aesthetic Concepts: A Rejoinder', The
PhilosophicalReview, Vol. 72, 1963, p. 82, and 'Aesthetic and Non-
aesthetic', The PhilosophicalReview,Vol. 74, 1965, p. 152); so far as I can
tell, they are not significantly altered in these later formulations. (In
what follows, numbers in parentheses refer to pagination in W. E.
Kennick, Art and Philosophy,New York, 1964, which contains a revised
version of the original article.) The two claims are:

(1) There are no non-aesthetic features which serve in any circum-

stances as logically sufficientconditionsfor applying aesthetic terms
(353).
(2) [Aestheticterms]maybe governednegatively by conditions(355).
In orderto see the problemwhichtheseclaimscreate,we mustfirst
understandthemand the termsusedto makethem. 'Whena word or
expressionis such that taste or perceptiveness is requiredin orderto
applyit, I shallcallit anaesthetictermor expression.. .' (351). Examples
of aesthetic terms cited by Sibley are: 'unified,balanced,integrated,lifeless,
serene, sombre, dynamic,fowerful, vivid, delicate, moving, trite, sentimental,
tragic' (351). I think we may paraphrase (1) in the following fashion,
where 'N' ranges over non-aesthetic features and 'A' over the aesthetic
features which correspond to aesthetic terms:

(la) For all N and for all A, it is not the case that anything's having
the feature N entails its having the feature A.
The concept of being 'governed negatively' by conditions is illustrated
by the following examples, among others: 'It may be impossible that a
thing should be garish if all its colours are pale pastels, or flamboyant
if all its lines are straight' (355). For a term to be governed negatively by

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