Stoljar, D. (2014). Identity theory of mind In G. Oppy & N. N. Trakakis (Eds.), A companion to philosophy in Australia and New Zealand (Second Edition, pp. 228-232; first edition 2010). Monash University Publishing.
[Citing Place (1956)]  
Citing Place (1956) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
* The identity theory of mind says that the mind is — i.e. is identical to—the brain, and in particular that individual mental states, such as being in pain, suddenly remembering where your car keys are, or smelling a lemon, are identical to particular physical states of the brain. The theory played an important role in the development of Australian philosophy. It was formulated and defended by Australian and Australian-associated philosophers in the 1950s and ’60s, in particular U. T. Place, J. J. C. Smart, D. M. Armstrong and David Lewis, and the basic principles of the theory continue to have a significant presence in Australian philosophy, for example, in the program for metaphysics set out in Jackson (1998b).
* Following Stubenberg (1997), one might divide the identity theory in the 1950s and ’60s into two versions. One version is associated with Herbert Feigl (see Feigl 1967) and other philosophers who had moved from Europe to the U.S. in the 1930s and ’40s; Stubenberg calls this the ‘Austrian’ version. Another version is associated with philosophers either working in Australia or who spent considerable time in Australia—the ‘Australian’ version. One thing that divides the Australian version from the Austrian version is that the Austrians were more concerned with the physical part of the identity theory, i.e. with the question of what brain state or physical state various mental states are to be identified with. For the Australians, by contrast, the emphasis was more on the nature of mental states, and in particular on providing an analysis of what various mental states consisted in. [...]
Within the Australian version of the identity theory, one might make a further division between two temporal phases in its development. U. T. Place and J. J. C. Smart, then colleagues at the University of Adelaide, are the key figures of the first phase. In Place’s 1956 paper, ‘Is Consciousness a Brain Process?’, we find an acceptance of the point that identity statements such as ‘the feeling of melancholy = brain state S’ bring together expressions that have very different meanings and so are not true by definition. But even if not true by definition, Place insisted that they are (on occasion) nevertheless true. To be more precise, Place insisted on something close to this. For in fact Place’s focus was not on the identity statements as such, but on statements such as ‘her table is an old packing case’, which he thought of as involving what he called the ‘is’ of constitution. It is natural to read Place here as saying that the mind is constituted by the brain rather as a table might be constituted by an old packing case. In turn, this seems to entail that a table (or the mind) might have properties that the old packing case that constitutes it (or the brain) does not. But then Place is not defending an identity theory strictly speaking. The reason is that the sense of identity that is at issue in these debates is the logical one, according to which if x = y, then every property of x is a property of y; correlatively, if even one property of x is not a property of y, then it is not the case that x = y.
Like Place’s ‘Is Consciousness a Brain Process?’, Smart’s major paper ‘Sensations and Brain Processes’ (1959b) did not argue positively for the identity theory. Rather Smart’s stated goal is to remove any conceptual barriers to that theory. (Smart in fact says that his paper is simply a complement both to Place’s paper and to Feigl 1967, the key document of the Austrian version of the identity theory.)
* Smart’s paper was distinctive because of its focus on logical features of identity and because of its appeal to topic-neutral language. It was distinctive in two further ways as well, ways that mark a division between the first phase of the Australian version of the identity theory and the second phase, in which Armstrong and Lewis are the key figures. First, Smart (and Place) insisted on a divorce of sensory and perceptual mental states, on the one hand, from cognitive and conative mental states (i.e. beliefs and desires) on the other. Indeed both Smart and Place believed that Ryle’s behaviourist position was correct about the latter. By contrast, the positions developed by Armstrong and Lewis in the mid 1960s were intended to apply to all mental states whatsoever. This is particularly the case in Armstrong (1968), where the theory is applied to many kinds of mental states, including beliefs, perception, sensations, and introspection.
Second, Smart thought that the identity theory was an empirical hypothesis in the sense that it was made probable by scientific observations, but as we have seen he did not argue positively for the identity theory.