24 publications of Place that refer to Smart (1959). Sensations and brain processes.
Place, U. T. (1960). Materialism as a scientific hypothesis. Philosophical Review, 69, 101-104.
[References] [Is reply to] [17 citing publications] [8 referring publications by Place] [2 reprinting collections]
Download: 1960 Materialism as a Scientific Hypothesis.pdf
Place, U. T. (1967). Comments on H. Putnam 'Psychological predicates'. In W. H. Capitan, & D. D. Merrill (Eds.), Art, mind and religion: Proceedings of the 1965 Oberlin Colloquium in Philosophy (pp.55-68). Pittsburgh University Press.
[References] [Is reply to] [Talks] [6 citing publications] [7 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1967 Comments on H. Putnam's 'Psychological Predicates'.pdf
Place, U. T. (1969a). Burt on brain and consciousness. Bulletin of the British Psychological Society, 22, 285-292.
Keywords: consciousness, introspection
[References] [Is reply to] [1 citing publications] [6 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1969a Burt on Brain and Consciousness.pdf
Place, U. T. (1969b). Collected papers on brain, mind and consciousness [Doctoral thesis submitted 1969 for the degree of D.Litt, degree awarded in 1972]. University of Adelaide.
[References] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1969b Brain, Mind and Consciousness - Introduction DLitt Thesis.pdf [includes editorial changes by UTP]
Place, U. T. (1972a). Sensations and processes - a reply to Munsat. Mind, LXXXI, 106-112. www.jstor.org/stable/2252189
[References] [Is reply to] [1 citing publications] [9 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1972a Sensations and Processes - A Reply to Munsat.pdf
Place, U. T. (1974-03-13). Lecture 19: Perception, topic neutrality and the properties of experience (13/3/1974). Section 5
[Abstract]Phenomenalism. Topic neutrality of phenomenal descriptions. Introspective reports. The expression of pain. Dream reports. Thesis: the language we use to describe our private experiences and sensations is a metaphorical extension of a language whose basic function is to describe material objects and their properties as they exist and occur in a three dimensionally extended spatial world.
[References]
Download: Amsterdam lecture 19
Place, U. T. (1974-03-27). Lecture 21: The Mind-Brain Identity Theory (27/3/1974). Section 6
[Abstract]The mind-body problem and its history. The Mind-Brain Identity Theory.
[References]
Download: Amsterdam Lecture 21.pdf
Place, U. T. (1974-04-24) Lecture 22: The materialist hypothesis and Leibniz's Law (24/4/1974). Section 6
[Abstract]Materialism as a scientific hypothesis. Logical crtieria for identy and Leibniz's Principle or Law. Experiences
[References]
Download: Amsterdam Lecture 22.pdf
Place, U. T. (1974-05-01). Lecture 23: Presumptive criteria of identity and Central State Materialism (1/5/1974). Section 6
[Abstract]Presumptive criteria of identity: spatio-temporal location, micro reductive explanation and the explanation of common observations. Central State Materialism
[References]
Download: Amsterdam Lecture 23.pdf
Place, U. T. (1977a). Twenty years on - "Is consciousness still a brain process?" Open Mind, 6,3-10.
[References] [1 citing publications] [3 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1977a Twenty Years On - Is Consciousness Still a Brain Process.pdf
Place, U. T. (1988a). Thirty years on - is consciousness still a brain process? Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 66, 208-219.
[References] [14 citing publications] [5 referring publications by Place] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 1988a Thirty Years On - Is Consciousness Still a Brain Process.pdf
Place, U. T. (1989a). Low claim assertions. In J. Heil (Ed.), Cause, mind and reality: Essays honoring C. B. Martin (pp. 121-135). Kluwer. doi:10.1007/978-94-011-9734-2_9
Keywords: colours, mind-brain identity theory, introspection, phenomenological fallacy, topic neutrality
[References] [4 citing publications] [4 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1989a Low claim assertions.pdf
Place, U. T. (1990a). E. G. Boring and the mind-brain identity theory. The British Psychological Society, History and Philosophy of Psychology Newsletter, 11, 20-31.
[References] [Talks] [7 citing publications] [3 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1990a E.G. Boring and the Mind-Brain Identity Theory.pdf added to the end of the document are excerpts from Boring, 1933
Place, U. T. (1990e). Critical Notice [Unpublished book review of Neurophilosophy: Toward a Unified Science of the Mind Brain by Patricia Smith Churchland. MIT Press, l986].
Keywords: conceptual analysis, eliminative materialism, mind-brain identity theory, neurophilosophy
Note:
This critical notice was commissioned by the editor of the Quarterly Journal of Philosophy in 1986 when the book first appeared; but since it was not completed until four years later in 1990, it was never submitted. It was revised in 1999 in anticipation of a meeting with Pat Churchland in Siena, Italy, in October of that year - a meeting that because of the illness of Place never took place.
[References] [Reviewed publication(s)]
Download: 1990e Critical Notice.pdf
Place, U. T. (1995a). The Searle fallacy: a reply to John Beloff (and in passing to John Searle). The British Psychological Society, History and Philosophy of Psychology Newsletter, 21, 5-18.
[References] [Is reply to] [Is replied by]
Download: 1995a The Searle Fallacy a Reply to John Beloff (and in passing to John Searle).pdf
Place, U. T. (1995b). 'Is consciousness a brain process?' Some misconceptions about the article. In B. Borstner, & J. Shawe-Taylor (Eds.), Consciousness at the crossroads of cognitive science and philosophy: Selected proceedings of the final meeting of the Tempus Project 'Phenomenology and Cognitive Science', Maribor, Slovenia, 23-7 August, 1994 (pp. 9-15). Imprint Academic.
[References] [1 referring publications by Place]
Download: 1995b 'Is Consciousness a Brain Process' Some Misconceptions about the Article.pdf
Place, U. T. (1997g). We needed the analytic-synthetic distinction to formulate mind-brain identity then: we still do [Conference presentation, presented at a Symposium on 'Forty years of Australian Materialism', June 21st 1997]. Department of Philosophy, University of Leeds.
[Abstract]Quine's (1951/1980) repudiation of the analytic-synthetic distinction undermines three principles fundamental to the view expounded in ‘Is consciousness a brain process?' (Place 1956):
the idea that problems, such as that of the relation between mind and body, are partly conceptual confusions to be cleared away by philosophical analysis and partly genuine empirical questions to be investigated and answered decisively by the relevant empirical science, the distinction between the meaning of what the individual says when she describes her private experiences and the nature of the actual events she is describing as revealed by science, and the claim that, unless the connection is obscured by the different ways in which the two predicates come to be applied, co-extensive predicates become conceptually (intensionally) connected, and sentences asserting their identity become analytic. It is argued that, if the object is, as it should be, to assimilate this case to other cases of type-identity in science, rather than perpetuate the problem, these principles are still needed.
[References] [Talks]
Download: 1997g We Needed the Analytic-Synthetic Distinction to Formulate the Mind-Brain Identity Then We Still Do.pdf
Place, U. T. (1997j). Is consciousness a grain process? A response to Graham & Horgan [Unpublished response to a final draft (1997) of Graham, G., & Horgan, T. (2002). Sensations and grain processes. In J. H. Fetzer (Ed.), Consciousness Evolving (pp.63-86). John Benjamins.]
Note:
[There is some overlap with Place (1999e).]
[References] [Is reply to]
Download: 1997j Is Consciousness a Grain Process - A Response to Horgan & Graham.pdf
Place, U. T. (1998-06-19). Workshop on 'Consciousness and the Identity Theory'. Conference on 'Neural Correlates of Consciousness: Empirical and Conceptual Issues', Association for the Scientific Study of Consciousness, Bremen, Germany, 19 June 1998.
[Abstract]This workshop will examine whether the thesis that consciousness is a process in the brain differs from other cases of what I call “compositional type-identities“ in science, such as 'Water is H2O', 'The temperature of a body is its rate of molecular motion', 'Lightning is an electric discharge through the atmosphere', only to the extent that the brain process or processes in question have not yet been precisely specified by neuroscientific research. The rapid development of such research in recent years makes it likely that such exact specification will soon be possible. It is, therefore, imperative that we examine whether the analogy holds good, or whether the alleged disanalogies are such as to rule out such identification. We begin with a brief history of the identity theory, beginning with Boring (1933), Place (1954; 1956), Feigl (1958; 1967), Smart (1959), followed by a glance at subsequent developments, such as eliminative materialism (Feyerabend 1963; Rorty 1965; Churchland 1981), central state materialism (Armstrong 1968), token identity physicalism (Davidson 1970/1980), Kripke's (1972/1980) intuition, and the qualia problem (Nagel 1974). We shall then examine topics such as the nature of the identity relation, the 'is' of composition versus the 'is' of identity, Boring's claim that perfect correlation is identity, the process whereby compositional type identities become analytic, with a consequent change in the meaning of the common sense concept involved, once they become matters of established scientifc fact, before considering some of the alleged disanalogies between the consciousness brain-process case and standard cases of compositional type-identity.
[References]
Place, U. T. (1998a). From mystical experience to biological consciousness: a pilgrim's progress? In Man Cheung Chung (Ed.), Current Trends in History and Philosophy of Psychology, (Vol. 1, 1998, chapter 8, pp. 43-48). British Psychological Society.
[Abstract]I recount the history of a thought process leading from an adolescent interest in mystical experience to an article entitled 'Is consciousness a brain process?' (Place 1956) in which I gave an affirmative answer to that question. A psychological research project designed to demonstrate the adaptive function of a personality transformation brought about through mystical experience becomes an attempt to resolve the mind-body problem through an empirical evaluation of the hypothesis that consciousness is a behaviour-controlling process in the brain. The mystic's insistence on the inadequacy of words to describe such experiences leads through the logical positivist's claim that religious language is nonsense, to the view that nothing that introspecting subjects say about their experiences is inconsistent with anything the physiologist might say about the brain processes in which on this view they consist.
Note:
This is a shortened version of Place (2004).
[References] [Related] [Talks] [1 citing publications]
Download: 1998a From Mystical Experience to Biological Consciousness.pdf
Place, U. T. (2000b). The causal potency of qualia: Its nature and its source. Brain and Mind, 1, 183-192. doi:10.1023/A:1010023129393
[Abstract]There is an argument (Medlin, 1967; Place, 1988) which shows conclusively that if qualia are causally impotent we could have no possible grounds for believing that they exist. But if, as this argument shows, qualia are causally potent with respect to the descriptions we give of them, it is tolerably certain that they are causally potent in other more biologically significant respects. The empirical evidence, from studies of the effect of lesions of the striate cortex (Humphrey, 1974; Weiskrantz, 1986; Cowey and Stoerig, 1995) shows that what is missing in the absence of visual qualia is the ability to categorize sensory inputs in the visual modality. This would suggest that the function of private experience is to supply what Broadbent (1971) calls the “evidence” on which the categorization of problematic sensory inputs are based. At the same time analysis of the causal relation shows that what differentiates a causal relation from an accidental spatio-temporal conjunction is the existence of reciprocally related dispositional properties of the entities involved which combine to make it true that if one member of the conjunction, the cause, had not existed, the other, the effect, would not have existed. The possibility that qualia might be dispositional properties of experiences which, as it were, supply the invisible “glue” that sticks cause to effect in this case is examined, but finally rejected.
[References] [Talks] [4 citing publications] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 2000b The Causal Potency of Qualia.pdf
Place, U. T. (2000f). Identity theories. In M. Nani, & M. Maraffa (Eds.), A Field Guide to the Philosophy of Mind. Roma Tre University. Retrieved Februari 9, 2019, from http://host.uniroma3.it/progetti/kant/field/mbit.htm
[References] [3 citing publications]
Download: 2000f Theories of Mind.pdf
Place, U. T. (2002). A pilgrim's progress? From mystical experience to biological consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 9(3), 34-52. www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2002/00000009/00000003/1261
[Abstract]Ullin Thomas Place died on 2nd January 2000 at the age of seventy-five. I had met him a little over three years earlier, in November 1996, during the annual 'Mind and Brain' symposium organized by Peter Fenwick and held at the Institute of Psychiatry in London. At that meeting Professor Place delivered a slightly shortened version of the paper reproduced here, in which he told his personal story — a pilgrim's progress? — recounting, as he put it, 'the history of a thought process leading from an adolescent interest in mystical experience to an article entitled 'Is consciousness a brain process?' [Place, 1956] in which I argued for an affirmative answer to that question'. [Abstract by Anthony Freedom]
[References] [Related] [1 citing publications]
Download: 2002 A Pilgrim's Progress.pdf
Place, U. T. (2004). From mystical experience to biological consciousness. A pilgrim's progress? In G. Graham, & E.R. Valentine (Eds.), Identifying the mind: Selected papers of U. T. Place (pp. 14-29). Oxford University Press.
[Abstract]I recount the history of a thought process leading from an adolescent interest in mystical experience to an article entitled 'Is consciousness a brain process?' in which I argued for an affirmative answer to that question. For the first time in recent history the materialist thesis was presented in a form in which it could withstand what had previously been regarded as decisive philosophical objections. The paper contains a critique of the "phenomenological fallacy" in which I draw attention to how little we can really say about the properties of our private experiences. This argument owes much to the insistence of the mystics on the inadequacy of words to describe their experiences.
Keywords: consciousness
Note:
This paper is published with minor editorial changes and without the abstract and the appendix in G. Graham and E. R. Valentine (Eds.) (2004). Identifying the Mind: Selected Papers of U. T. Place (pp. 14-29). Oxford University Press,.
The paper was already finished in 1996. A shortened version was presented to the Mind and Brain symposium, organized by Dr. Peter Fenwick at the Institute of Psychiatry, London, in November 1996 and to the Eleventh Annual Conference of the British Psychological Society, History and Philosophy Section, York, March 1997. It was published under a different title and edited by Anthony Freeman including an editorial introduction and footnotes as Place, U. T. (2002). A pilgrim’s progress? Journal of Consciousness Studies. 9(3), 34-52.
[References] [Related] [Talks] [2 citing publications] [1 reprinting collections]
Download: 2004 From Mystical Experience to Biological Consciousness.pdf