Smith, E. (2016) How to teach philosophy of mind Teaching Philosophy, 39(2), 177-207. doi:10.5840/teachphil201651649
[Abstract]The most notable contributions to contemporary philosophy of mind have been written by philosophers of mind for philosophers of mind. Without a good understanding of the historical framework, the technical terminology, the philosophical methodology, and the nature of the philosophical problems themselves, not only do undergraduate students face a difficult challenge when taking a first course in philosophy of mind, but instructors lacking specialized knowledge in this field might be put off from teaching the course. This paper is intended to provide a framework for instructors with little background in this area of philosophy to develop a course in philosophy of mind. This course, aimed at the advanced undergraduate student, provides students with the tools necessary for understanding some of the key readings in contemporary philosophy of mind and offers unique benefits to both majors and non-majors. The course described here focuses on just two of the main problems in philosophy of mind—the mind-body problem and the problem of phenomenal consciousness—and briefly touches on other issues one might address. Finally, several solutions to common challenges that arise in an advanced philosophy course are discussed.
[Citing Place (1956)]  
Citing Place (1956) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
Section The Mind-Body Problem
Subsection The Major Theories of the Mind
* Identity theory avoids some of the problems encountered by behaviorism by identifying mental types of states with types of brain states (or more precisely with physical states of the central nervous system) (Place 2002 [1956], Smart 2004 [1959]). What it is to have an itch, to believe that snow is white, or to want some pizza, just is to be in a certain type of brain state. Like other physicalist theories of the mind, this theory avoids the interaction problem. And, it gives a plausible account of the relationship between a person’s environmental circumstances and the person’s behavior. However, the view has been charged with being “chauvinistic” (Block 2002)—it withholds attribution of mental states from things that could plausibly have them. It is conceivable that some creature whose physiology is quite unlike ours could still feel pain, have beliefs and desires, etc. That is, the identity theorist’s identification of mental state types with types of brain states is only contingently true. This is problematic since what we want is an analysis of mental states—what want to know what pains, beliefs, and desires are, not what they could be—and analyses must be expressed as necessary truths (Kripke 2004).