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Type physicalism (also known as reductive materialism, type identity theory, mind–brain identity theory, and identity theory of mind) is a physicalist theory in the philosophy of mind. It asserts that mental events can be grouped into types, and can then be correlated with types of physical events in the brain .
The philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of the mind and its relation to the body and the external world. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addressed, such as the hard problem of consciousness and the nature of particular mental states.
In the philosophy of mind, functionalism is the thesis that each and every mental state (for example, the state of having a belief, of having a desire, or of being in pain) is constituted solely by its functional role, which means its causal relation to other mental states, sensory inputs, and behavioral outputs. [1]
Anomalous monism is a philosophical thesis about the mind–body relationship.It was first proposed by Donald Davidson in his 1970 paper "Mental Events". The theory is twofold and states that mental events are identical with physical events, and that the mental is anomalous, i.e. under their mental descriptions, relationships between these mental events are not describable by strict physical ...
There, he became acquainted with philosophy of mind in the logical behaviorist tradition, of which Ryle was a major exponent. Although he would later abandon logical behaviorism as a theory of the mind in favor of the type-identity theory, Place nevertheless continued to harbor sympathies toward the behavioristic approach to psychology in general.
In the 20th century, its most significant defenders have been the noted philosopher of science Karl Popper and the neurophysiologist John Carew Eccles. [4] Popper, in fact, divided reality into three "worlds"—the physical, the mental, and objective knowledge (outside the mind)—all of which interact, [5] and Eccles adopted this same "trialist" form of interactionism. [6]
The word "physicalism" was introduced into philosophy in the 1930s by Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap. [6]The use of "physical" in physicalism is a philosophical concept and can be distinguished from alternative definitions found in the literature (e.g., Karl Popper defined a physical proposition as one that can at least in theory be denied by observation [7]).
In his article "Sensations and Brain Processes" (1959), J. J. C. Smart invoked Occam's razor with the aim to justify his preference of the mind-brain identity theory over spirit-body dualism. Dualists state that there are two kinds of substances in the universe: physical (including the body) and spiritual, which is non-physical.