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Ullin T. Place (1924-2000)

Related Publications

Fodor, J. A. (1978) Computation and reduction. In W. Savage (Ed.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science: Perception and Cognition (Vol. 9, pp. 229-260).
[Citing Place (1956)]  
Citing Place (1956) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
Section Introduction
* My present interest is the following. Although it is fairly clear what kinds of problems phenomena of intentionality raise for behavioristic reductions of psychological predicates, very little is understood about the problems they raise for physicalistic reductions of the sort often contemplated by central-state identity theorists. In fact, it often happens in the standard literature on mind/body identity that this question is not so much as aired. Footnote 2: Quine (1960), Davidson (1970), and Dennett (1971) are perhaps the best examples of influential physicalists to whom this charge does not apply. Perhaps this is due to the continuing influence of an early version of the identity theory, which was physicalist about sensations but behaviorist about propositional attitudes (see, for example, Place, 1956, and Smart, 1957). On that view, physicalism presupposes behavioral analyses for those psychological predicates which most evidently establish intensional contexts: verbs like "hopes," "thinks," "intends," "feels that," "believes," etc. The identity theory is thus left free to operate in the account of sensations, an area where issues of intensionality seem less pressing.