Reading Notes: March 5th, 2022

“I want to stress from the outset that in defending the thesis that consciousness is a process in the brain, I am not trying to argue that when we describe our dreams, fantasies, and sensations we are talking about processes in our brains. That is, I am not claiming that statements about sensations and mental images are reducible to or analyzable into statements about brain processes…To say that statements about consciousness are statements about brain processes is manifestly false. This is shown (a) by the fact that you can describe your sensations and mental imagery without knowing anything about your brain processes or even that such things exist, (b) by the fact that statements about one’s consciousness and statements about one’s brain processes are verified in entirely different ways, and (c) by the fact that there is nothing self-contradictory about the statement “X has a pain but there is nothing going on in his brain.” What I do want to assert, however, is that the statement “Consciousness is a process in the brain,” although not necessarily true, is not necessarily false. “Consciousness is a process in the brain” in my view is neither self-contradictory nor self-evident; it is a reasonable scientific hypothesis, in the way that the statement “Lighting is a motion of electric charges” is a reasonable scientific hypothesis.” (Place, Is Consciousness a Brain Process?, 55-56) 

“Large parts of analytic philosophy, that is, involve proposing and assessing ways of interpreting the presuppositions of everyday life so as they are compatible with the truth of physicalism. Famous philosophers are often associated with particular proposals about how to do this. For example, Gilbert Ryle in The Concept of Mind (1949) is famous for saying that psychological claims are logically in a different category from other kinds of claim, and that if that is true, the conflict between physicalism and psychological claims is merely apparent. Similarly, J.J.C. Smart’s paper ‘Sensations and Brain Processes’ (1959) is famous for saying that we might exploit Frege’s distinction between the sense of an expression and its referent in order to remove the source of tension between ordinary talk about mental states such as sensations and physicalism.” (Stoljar, Physicalism, 15)