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Ullin T. Place (1924-2000)

Related Publications

Heil, J. (2011). Powers and the realization relation. The Monist,94(1), 34-53.
[Citing Place (1956)]  
Citing Place (1956) in context (citations start with an asterisk *):
* Few ideas in the philosophy of mind have enjoyed wider support than the notion that states of mind are 'multiply realizable'. Arguments for multiple realizability were popularized in the late 1960s by Hilary Putnam (1967) and Jerry Fodor (1968) as responses to attempts in the previous decade by Place (1956), Feigl (1958), Smart (1959) and others to identify states of mind with neurological goings-on and thereby reduce minds to brains. The problem is that creatures can diverge neurologically, yet answer to the same psychological descriptions. You and an octopus, we suppose, can feel pain. But you and the octopus differ dramatically in your neurological makeup. When you are in pain, whatever goes on inside you that might be a plausible candidate for identification with your experiences of pain differs strikingly from candidate octopodean states potentially identifiable as experiences of pain. Such examples could be multiplied indefinitely. There is little prospect, then, of identifying the property of being in pain with any neurological property.