Fisher, A. R. J. (2022). The two Davids and Australian Materialism. In P. R. Anstey, & D. Braddon-Mitschell (Eds.), Armstrong's Materialist Theory of Mind (pp. 29-51). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/oso/9780192843722.003.0004
[Citing Place (1954)]  [Citing Place (1956)]  
Citing Place (1954) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
see citation of Place (1956)
Citing Place (1956) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
Section 1. Introduction
The main figures in the Australian materialist tradition are U. T. Place, J. J. C. Smart, D. M. Armstrong, and David Lewis. Place (1956) set things in motion by arguing that the statement 'consciousness is a brain process' is an empirically reasonable hypothesis. [...]
According to standard histories of analytic philosphy of mind, the identity theory bursts onto the scene in reaction to logical behaviorism. [...] This view is a semantic thesis and the analyses offered are conceptual and knowable apriori. Rudolf Carnap, Carl Hempel, and Gilbert Ryle, so the story goes, held this position. Then the identity theorists came along in the 1950s and 1960s, namely Herbert Feigl, Place, and Smart, and proposed that the purported identity between the mental and the physical is factual, not conceptual and knowable a posteriori. [...]
Sean Crawford (2013) has recently shown that this story has many holes. [..]
For one thing, Feigl's identity theory is quite different from Place's and Smart's. Feigl ... regards the data of immediate experience as the 'ultimate testing ground' [...] [I]n specifiying what is identical with what, Feigl says: '[t]he identity is that of the structure of certain global aspects (Gestalten) of the processes in the cerebrak cortex ... [S]ome philosophers has labeled his view the 'qualtitative identity theory' (Pepper 1975, 37) and a 'mentalistic form of the identity theory' (Crawford 2013, 646)
[...] Australian materialism does not develop out of logical positivism or logical empiricism. Place's 'Is Consciousness a Brain Process?' is actually a continuation of an earlier paper wherein he accepts Ryle's behaviourism (Place 1954). Although Ryle is misinterpreted on this point, he does not believe that all mental concepts are subject ot a behaviourist treatment. He thought that his behaviourist treatment did not apply to the concept of having a sensation, and he recognized this as a shortcoming (Ryle 1949, Chapter 7, Section 1). Some philosophers did read Ryle correctly. In addition to Place, Iris Murdoch and Julia Tanney interpret Ryle in the way ...
Place's disagreement with Ryle was specifically about 'heed' concepts (such as attending to, observing, being conscious of something). Place thought they had to refer to some internal state (Place 1954, 254). He thus restricted the scope of behaviourism: the recalcitrant sensory concepts gave way to an identification of sensations with brain processes. In one respect he can been seen as improving Ryle's position. [...] Smart initially held a full-blown (unrestricted) behaviourism about all mental concepts, convinced that Ryle's position could be extended to cover sensory concepts. [...] But due to three-away discussions with Charlie Martin and Place, Smart came around to Place's restricted behaviourism (Smart 1959) and then the identity theory (Smart 1967). Fn 2. C. F. Presley says: 'Smart, who describes himself as having previously been "very Rylean", became converted Place's view when, as visiting Professor at Princeton in 1957, he was conducting a graduate class on Wittgenstein and Ryle. In November of that year, he read a paper at Cornell in which he defended Place's view' (Presley 1967,xi). [...]
The conceptual breakthrough for Place and Smart was the realization that the identity theory is not a translation thesis between sensation statements and brain process statements. It is an ontic thesis. [...] Place and Smart (and probably Martin) realized that even though it is impossible to translate X-statements in terms of Y-statements, it does not follow that the Xs are not identical with the Ys. [...]