The mind-body problem

Wiliam Joske

pp. 39-51

in: Jan Srzednicki, David Wood (eds), Essays on philosophy in Australia, Berlin, Springer, 1992

Abstract

With the publication in 1959 of J.J.C. Smart's article "Sensations and Brain Processes"¹ the mind-body problem became the dominating concern of Australian philosophers, and Australia became the centre of a movement to rehabilitate the ancient but discredited theory that the mind is the brain. It was widely held that solid arguments could be used to demonstrate the impossibility of mental states being brain states, and those who held that mental states were indeed states of the brain were at first dismissed as philosophically ignorant and intellectually unsophisticated. The new materialists had therefore to rebut what were accepted as powerful arguments, and to challenge the view of philosophy that was implicit in these arguments. They succeeded, and in so doing liberated philosophy from restrictions that threatened to make it irrelevant and empty.