The Problem Of Self State - 1458 Words

Conscious state according to dictionary.com is being aware of one’s own existence these may involve thoughts, sensations (images, aches, pain, visual, auditory and tactual sensation etc.). Smart refuses to admit to the fact that sensations are irreducibly psychical because of Occam’s razor (which suggests that such matters should not even be put into consideration). He affirms there is no philosophical argument that compels us to be dualist, he writes â€Å"I am in pain is a genuine report, and that what it reports is an irreducibly psychical something†(Adler and Elgin 384). From this context he believes that by claiming one is in pain one is reporting something, which is over and above, (something unexplainable beyond the human†¦show more content†¦we should also involve conscious state as well. He thinks of sensations as dispositions towards a certain types of stimulus/temptation. He reduced behaviours to dispositions and he classified them as being b rain processes an example he gives an example of New Zealanders and the English who both refer to Venus when one group refers to it as ‘Morning Star’ and the other as ‘Evening Star’ his aims is to show that sensations may be similar but with different physical phenomenon. For example two people may be identical in their appearances but might have different properties. â€Å"The question might be asked, that even if sensations are identical with brain processes, are there not introspected non-physical properties of sensations that are not identical with properties of brain processes?†(Identity theory) . To dispel this thought smart adopts topic-neutral a narrower sense of being neutral to dualism and physicalism (Identity theory). If sensations are caused by physical/material things for example light the question based on this belief is whether sensations are material or immaterial from the given example above (Identity theory). Putnam admits to a lo t of claims made by Smart, they both share similar views on identifying pain and other mental states with brain processes. Putman begins by disagreeing with philosophers who maintain that pain states are brain states, and he calls this claim unintelligible. He goes