Lycan, W. G. (2014). Functionalism. In G. Oppy & N. N. Trakakis (Eds.), A companion to philosophy in Australia and New Zealand (Second Edition, pp. 203-209; first edition 2010). Monash University Publishing.
[Citing Place (1956)]  [Citing Place (1967)]  
Citing Place (1956) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
* Functionalism in the philosophy of mind is one species of the view that mental states are (nothing but) internal states of the brain. It was inspired, circa 1960, by three things: the identity theory of mind that had been put forward a few years earlier by U. T. Place and J. J. C. Smart of the University of Adelaide; a prominent objection to that theory, offered by Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam; and the then emerging computer model of the mind. Functionalism continues to this day as a leading theory of mind. But it has never been popular in Australasia.
Section The Identity Theory
* Place and Smart had begun as behaviourists, falling in roughly with Skinner in psychology and Carnap and Ryle in philosophy. On that view, to be in a mental state of type such-and-such is merely to behave in certain characteristic ways or to be disposed to do so; there are no such things as ‘minds’, and mental states are not occurrent or episodic or inside people’s heads. But doubters found it inescapable that there are, in some sense, inner mental episodes that we know from the inside—thoughts, feelings, experiences, that occur in real time and that are not constituted either by any actual behaviour or simply by the mere truth of a hypothetical ‘If X were to happen, you would do Y’. While still primarily loyal to behaviourism, Place (1956) courageously granted that ‘there would seem to be an intractable residue of concepts clustering around the notions of consciousness, experience, sensation, and mental imagery, where some sort of inner process story is unavoidable’ (1956: 44). According to Place and Smart, and contrary to the behaviourists, at least some mental states and events are genuinely inner and genuinely occurrent after all. They are not to be identified with outward behaviour or even with hypothetical dispositions to behave. But, contrary to mind-body dualists of any sort, the inner mental items are not ghostly or non-physical either. Rather, they are neurophysiological.
* Place and Smart (1959b) applied this identity theory of mind only to sensations; only later did D. M. Armstrong (1968) generalise it to all mental states and events.
Section The Australian Reaction
* Place, interestingly, went on to defend type identity against multiple realisability, and did so throughout his distinguished career as both psychologist and philosopher (1967; 2004 [Identifying the mind]).
Citing Place (1967) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
see the citations of Place (1956)